Gorontalo language
Encyclopedia
The Gorontalo language is a Philippine
Philippine languages
The Philippine languages are a 1991 proposal by Robert Blust that all the languages of the Philippines and northern Sulawesi—except Sama–Bajaw and a few languages of Palawan—form a subfamily of Austronesian languages...

 language spoken in Gorontalo Province (Northern Sulawesi
Sulawesi
Sulawesi is one of the four larger Sunda Islands of Indonesia and is situated between Borneo and the Maluku Islands. In Indonesia, only Sumatra, Borneo, and Papua are larger in territory, and only Java and Sumatra have larger Indonesian populations.- Etymology :The Portuguese were the first to...

, Indonesia, southern coast) by the Gorontalo people. There is no ISO 639-1
ISO 639-1
ISO 639-1:2002, Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 1: Alpha-2 code, is the first part of the ISO 639 series of international standards for language codes. Part 1 covers the registration of two-letter codes. There are 136 two-letter codes registered...

 code for Gorontalo. Dialects of Gorontalo are East Gorontalo, Gorontalo Kota, Tilamuta
Tilamuta
Tilamuta is a town in Sulawesi in Indonesia and is the seat of the Regency of Boalemo...

, Suwawa
Suwawa
Suwawa is a town in Indonesia and the regency seat of The Regency of Bone Bolango...

, and West Gorontalo. There were 900.000 speakers of Gorontalo in 1989.

Phonology

lab|alv. pal.vel.glot.
nasal m n ɲ ŋ
plosive p b t d c ɟ k ɡ ʔ
implosive ɓ ɗ
sonorant w l r j h


Consonant sequences include NC (homorganic nasal–plosive), where C may be /b d t d̠ ɟ ɡ k/. Elsewhere, /b d/ are relatively rare and only occur before high vowels. /d̠/, written in the literature, is a laminal post-alveoral coronal stop that is indeterminate as to voicing. The phonemic status of [ʔ] is unclear; if [VʔV] is interpreted as vowel sequences /VV/, then this contrasts with long vowels (where the two V's are the same) and vowel sequences separated by linking glides (where the two V's are different).

Sources

  • Steinhauer, H. (1991). "Problems of Gorontalese phonology." In H. A. Poeze and P. Schoorl (Ed.), Excursies in Celebes: een bundel bijdragen bij het afscheid van J. Noorduyn als directeur-secretaris van het Konninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkendkunde, 325-338. KITLV Uitgeverij.
  • Ethnologue.com
  • LinguistList.org
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