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Guide

Technical reference for the transcription and orthographic conventions adopted in this lexicon.

How to Read an Entry

Each lexical entry employs a four-tier representation system, designed to accommodate readers ranging from native Bugis speakers to researchers with no prior exposure to the language:

Lontara script — The entry headword rendered in aksara Lontara, the indigenous script of the Bugis tradition.

Transliteration — A character-by-character reading of the Lontara script, supplemented with diacritical annotations for phonological features not overtly encoded in the abugida. As an abugida, each Lontara consonant character carries an inherent vowel, which vowel marks then modify. This layer reads those graphemic units sequentially, with syllable boundaries marked by dots. Where the script leaves phonological information unmarked — such as vowel length — the editor supplies circumflex annotations (â, î, û, ế, ô, ê) based on contextual knowledge, dialect evidence, or comparison with oral sources. This layer thus provides a traceable record of interpretive decisions made during the reading of Lontara sources, serving as the editorial bridge between raw script and final transcription.

Transcription (transkripsi) — The full Latin orthographic representation, reflecting the complete phonological form of the word, including consonant gemination, glottal stop marking, and the acute accent (é) to distinguish the front mid vowel from the central mid vowel. This constitutes the primary written form for practical, everyday use.

IPA — A narrow transcription following the conventions of the International Phonetic Alphabet, provided as a standardised reference for cross-linguistic comparison.

The distinction between the second and third layers merits clarification. The transliteration operates at the level of individual Lontara graphemes, reading the abugida character by character and marking editorially identified features (such as long vowels) that the script does not encode. The transcription, by contrast, represents the word as a unified phonological unit, encoding features such as gemination and glottal stops that are integral to pronunciation but absent from the script.

In essence, the transliteration documents how the script was read and what editorial decisions were made; the transcription documents how the word is spoken and written.

Each entry additionally records part of speech, dialect affiliation, definitions in both Bugis and English, illustrative usage examples, etymological notes, source citation, and audio pronunciation where available.

Practical Transcription System

The transcription system adopted in this lexicon is designed for practical application in everyday written communication. The International Phonetic Alphabet, while indispensable for phonetic precision, requires a specialised character set that remains poorly supported across most standard keyboards, mobile devices, and digital platforms. The present system employs only common Latin characters supplemented by a minimal set of diacritics, ensuring broad accessibility without sacrificing phonological accuracy. IPA equivalents accompany each character throughout this guide to facilitate correspondence with international phonetic standards.

Diacritical Conventions

The orthographic system distinguishes two phonemically contrastive mid vowels in Bugis through the use of an acute accent:

The acute accent (é) is used in both the transliteration and the transcription layers.

Circumflex accents (â, î, û, ế, ô, ê) are used only in the transliteration layer, where they record editorially identified long vowels not marked in the Lontara script. They do not appear in the transcription, where long vowels are written with the plain vowel character.

Ina Sureq (Consonants)

The 23 base characters of the Lontara script, each carrying an inherent /a/ vowel:

Anaq Sureq (Vowel Marks)

Vowel marks modify the inherent /a/ vowel of each consonant. Shown here with ᨀ (k) as the base character:

Unmarked Sounds

Certain sounds in Bugis are not explicitly marked in the Lontara script. The practical transcription system represents these as follows:

The Representation of the Glottal Stop

The glottal stop /ʔ/ ranks among the most frequently occurring consonantal segments in Bugis, yet the Lontara script provides no dedicated grapheme for its representation. This absence — shared with the word-final nasal and vowel length — has generated sustained orthographic debate throughout the history of Bugis linguistic scholarship.

Several notational conventions have been employed across different periods and scholarly traditions:

The apostrophe was adopted by early European scholars, including B.F. Matthes in his Boegineesch-Hollandsch Woordenboek, following the conventions of the Ejaan Van Ophuijsen, the Dutch-era romanisation system then operative for Malay. This practice was also influenced by the Arabic-to-Latin transliteration convention for hamzah sukun. While widely familiar — and still prevalent in informal digital communication — the apostrophe introduces functional ambiguity with standard punctuation and renders inconsistently across platforms.

The acute accent, as employed by Matthes, placed a superscript mark above the vowel immediately preceding the glottal stop (e.g. á, ú). Whether this constitutes a distinct convention from the apostrophe or merely a typographic variant remains a matter of scholarly interpretation.

The letter k follows the convention established by Indonesian standard orthography (EYD) and has been adopted in certain reference works, including the Bugis dictionary published by the Balai Bahasa Sulawesi Selatan. However, this convention introduces a systematic ambiguity: Bugis possesses a distinct voiceless velar plosive /k/ (represented by ᨀ in Lontara), and conflating the two segments under a single grapheme obscures a phonemic distinction.

The IPA symbol ʔ has been used in phonologically oriented works, notably by Syahruddin Kaseng in his study of Bugis verbal morphology. While phonetically precise, this symbol is inaccessible to general readers and unavailable on standard keyboards.

This lexicon adopts the letter q as its representation of the glottal stop, following the orthographic consensus established during the preparation of Transkripsi dan Translasi La Galigo menurut NBG 188. This convention was agreed upon by a committee of senior linguists comprising Prof. Dr. Fachruddin Ambo Enre (Bugis), Prof. Dr. Kadir Manyambeang (Makassarese), Prof. Dr. Salombe (Torajan), and Dr. Suardi (Mandarese), together with their Dutch counterparts Prof. Dr. Noorduyn, Dr. Roger Tol, and Sirtjo Koolhof. The convention has since been maintained by Prof. Dr. Nurhayati Rahman in her subsequent La Galigo scholarship.

The rationale for q is both phonological and practical. Since the voiceless uvular plosive /q/ does not occur in the Bugis sound system, the letter stands available to serve unambiguously as a glottal stop marker. Laboratory phonetic analysis conducted in the Netherlands further confirmed that the Bugis glottal stop is articulatorily more forceful than its Indonesian counterpart — a distinction that reinforces the case for a dedicated, unambiguous symbol rather than reliance on conventions inherited from Indonesian orthography.

Examples:

Consonant Gemination (IPA: /Cː/)

Consonant length, though not orthographically distinguished in the Lontara script, is phonemically significant in Bugis. The practical system represents geminate consonants by doubling the relevant letter.

Long Vowels (IPA: /Vː/)

Vowel length is indicated by a circumflex accent in the transliteration layer only (â, î, û, ế, ô, ê), where it records an editorial decision about a feature not marked in the Lontara script. In the transcription, long vowels are written as plain vowel characters without diacritical marking.

Regional variation in the realisation of long vowels is attested: in certain dialect areas, long vowels correspond to sequences with a glottal stop, while in others they are realised as plain short vowels. The present system retains the long vowel notation as a recognised phonological category, with dialectal variants documented at the entry level.

Nasal Ending → ng (IPA: /ŋ/)

Word-final velar nasals, unmarked in the Lontara script, are written as ng in the practical system.