Tukang Besi language

Tukang Besi
Native to	Indonesia
Region	Sulawesi, Tukang Besi Archipelago
Native speakers	250,000 (1995)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian (MP) Nuclear MP Celebic Tukangbesi–Bonerate Tukang Besi
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: khc – Tukang Besi North bhq – Tukang Besi South
Glottolog	tuka1247[2]

Tukang Besi is an Austronesian language spoken in the Tukangbesi Islands in southeast Sulawesi in Indonesia by a quarter million speakers.

Phonology

The vowel phonemes of Tukang Besi

The northern dialect of Tukang Besi has 25 consonant phonemes and a basic 5-vowel system.^[3] It features stress which is usually on the second-to-last syllable. The language has two implosive consonants, which are uncommon in the world's languages. The coronal plosives and /s/ have prenasalized counterparts which act as separate phonemes.

		Bilabial		Dental/ Alveolar		Velar		Glottal
Nasal		m		n		ŋ
Plosive	plain	p	b	t̪	(d̪)	k	ɡ	ʔ
	prenasalized	mp	mb	n̪t̪	n̪d̪	ŋk	ŋɡ
Implosive			ɓ		ɗ̪
Fricative	plain		β	s	(z)			h
	prenasalized			n̪s̪
Trill				r
Lateral				l̪

/b/ only appears in loanwords, but it contrasts with /ɓ/. [d] and [z] are not phonemic and appear only as allophones of /dʒ/ which appears only in loanwords.

References

1. Tukang Besi North at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
   Tukang Besi South at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Tukang Besi". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
3. Donohue, Mark (1999). "Tukang Besi". Handbook of the International Phonetic Association. Cambridge University Press. pp. 151–53. ISBN 0-521-65236-7.