THE PHONETICS SYSTEM IN BUGINESE LANGUAGE

Buginese language or Bahasa Bugis is the language of people who inhabited in the Celebes (Sulawesi) island, eastern part of Indonesia, which is exactly in South Sulawesi province. Buginese has affiliation with Austronesian language family that spreads into the several parts of the province, such as Bone, Pinrang, Soppeng, Parepare, Sidrap, Barru, Sinjai and Sengkang. Buginese has roughly 3.6 million native speakers which is the largest among any other three ethnic groups in South Sulawesi; Makassar, Mandar, and Toraja. This paper aims to examine the phonetics system of this largest active language in South Sulawesi. Simply put, this article will identify the consonants and vowels which exist in Buginese language and analyse the occurrence of those consonants and vowels. Key Terms: Buginese, language, South Sulawesi, phonetics, consonants, vowels DOI: https://doi.org/10.33479/klausa.v3i01.146

process, I ask the speaker to pronounce every single of those 100 words for three times each, in order to see if there are any differences found. The recording then be transcribed using PRAAT, a computer software designed for spectrogram analysis, to identify all the consonants and vowels among the 100 words. For instance, here is the table that shows the recording transcriptions:
All (of a number) jamanəŋ 10.

Consonants
The following

Stop Consonants
The above table shows that Buginese language has nine Stop Consonants. However, as an important note, I found that there are also stop which are unexploded and marked as [ ̚ ], which stands for "no audible release" (Ladefoged and Johnson, 2015). It means that there are two consonants which have similarity within the word boundary. For instance, there are two bilabial stops [p] that occurred right after another such as in 'tup̚ paŋ ' (20) in which the first one is unreleased and the second one is exploded. I assume that this phenomenon is commonly occurred in Buginese language.

a. Voiceless bilabial stop [p] and voiced bilabial stop [b]
It appears that this language has two bilabial stops [  Most of the glottal sounds occur in the environment of word-finally and interestingly, the pattern of the glottal stop when in the end of a word could be spot by reading the spectrogram. In addition, the information shown in the spectrogram is always in a set of red pacifiers which formed a vertical line.

Nasals
There are four nasals identified in Buginese language, in which they are bilabial nasal [m]; dental alveolar nasal [n]; palatal nasal [ɲ]; and velar nasal [ŋ]. It is important to note that I found that nasals can be syllabic which the mark [ , ] under a consonant indicates that it is syllabic (Ladefoged and Johnson, 2015). It means that there is a consonant that forms a syllable on its own, for instance, nasal [m] as in 'gm ̩ aə' (37) is syllabic. This phenomenon does not occur in Buginese language. The environments where these four nasals occur and the respective location of each environment in Table 1 can be seen in Table 8 [ŋ], which means that they might be allophones of the same phoneme (complementary distribution). The table also demonstrates that Buginese frequently uses nasal consonants in its vocabulary.

Alveolar Thrill [r]
There are a significant number of alveolar thrill [r] in this language. The environments where the alveolar thrill occurs and the respective location of each environment in Table 1 Table 9.

According to Table 9, Alveolar thrill (r) in this language only occurs in the environment of either '[vowel]___[vowel]' or '[consonant]___[vowel]'.
Additionally, it appears that the pattern of the alveolar thrill could be noticed by reading the spectrogram. In addition, the [r] shown in the spectrogram is always in a set of vibration that formed a vertical line.

Fricatives
There are four fricatives indicated in this language, in which they are voiceless bilabial fricative [ɸ]; voiceless labiodental fricative [f]; voiceless alveolar fricative [s]; and voiceless glottal fricative [h]. It is important to note that, besides nasals, I found that fricative [s] can also be syllabic, since there is a syllabic which sounds line 'sss' as in 'ks̩ ːi a' (78). This phenomenon occurs occasionally in Buginese language. Simply put, the environments where these fricatives occur and the respective location of each environment in Table 1 are displayed below.

Fricativ es
Environments There are a significant number of lateral approximants [l] in this language. The environments they occur and the respective location of each environment in Table 1 (Ladefoged and Johnson, 2014). It occurs in the word "finallyae or before a consonant as in 'uːɫŋ' (73)

Vowel
It appears that Buginese language has a total of 6 vowels according to the findings and analysis of the data in Table 1

Close (high) back rounded vowel [u]
Here is the measurement of the Fr and F2 along with the mean of the six examples in Table 1 which contains vowel [u].

Close-mid front unrounded vowel [e]
Here is the measurement of the F1 and F2 along with the mean of the six examples in Table 1 which contains vowel [e].

Close-mid back rounded vowel [o]
Here is the measurement of the F1 and F2 along with the mean of the six examples in Table 1

Mid central vowel schwa [ə]
Here is the measurement of the F1 and F2 along with the mean of the six examples in Table 1 [ɸ]. What makes Buginese also special is that there are so many 'no audible release' found in plosives, and several syllabic consonants in nasals and fricative [s], as well as a few number of velarized [l]. With regard to vowels, Buginese has 5 vowels [a i u e o ə] in their phonetics inventory.