If you walk into streets in Baubau, Buton Island, Southeast Sulawesi, you can see many street signs, schools, public places, and even government offices in this city are written in Korean Hangeul and Latin scripts. If you are Koreans and you understand and speak Korean, this does not pronounce Korean in a logic sense or what supposed to be. It pronounces a different language which is considered as endangered by a minority ethnic in Buton Island. So, this is Cia-Cia language.
The Cia-Cia language is an Austronesian language that is spoken in Buton Island by people of Cia-Cia tribe, a minority ethnic living in the city of Baubau, Buton Island and according to Ethnologue, it is spoken by 79,000 people in 2005. The language belongs to Buton language in Muna-Buton language family and it is also spoken by a people of Cia-Cia in Buton Island, Binongko Island, Batu Atas Island, and Mainland Southeast Sulawesi, including the capital of Southeast Sulawesi Province, Kendari. There are two evidence theories how Cia-Cia people settled in Buton Island and several islands in Southeast Sulawesi, including Bau-Bau. First, according to J. Noorduyn, there is a legend that they descend from Butonese troops sent by a Butonese sultan. Second, according to Syahrir Ramadhan, a researcher who learned Cia-Cia language, culture and custom, he said that they were an isolate people that is originated from Sampolawa District, South Buton and began to forcedly migrate to Bau-Bau due to ethnic clash with the army in 1969 and they built new settlement called “Resettlement 11 Karya Baru (Resettlement Number 11 of Karya Baru)” and then neglected with no proper education of their mother tongue.
The Cia-Cia language was previously written in Perso-Arabic script due to Islamization of this area, but after the Independence of Indonesia, they slowly abandoned Perso-Arabic script and had substituted with Latin script. The problem was both Perso-Arabic and Latin scripts do not represent the uniqueness of consonants in the Cia-Cia language. According to Abidin, a language teacher in one of schools in Bau-Bau, he said “In Latin words, for instance, there's no agreed way to pronounce the sounds 'pha' or 'ta” and in the other hands, he also said “Students in our school use Perso-Arabic script, but it considers hard to represent our language”.
The revitalization project of this language was started in 2009 and initiated by the Former Mayor of Bau-Bau, MZ. Amirul Tamin after hearing the Former Vice-President of Republic of Indonesia, Jusuf Kalla said “some regional languages will be endangered if they don’t have proper scripts”. The project also included the aid of Prof. Chun Taihyun, a Malay expert from South Korea and a director of Hunminjeongeum Society of Korea along with the Seoul Metropolitan Government and began to compile the Cia-Cia words into Hangeul. However, it encountered difficulties in 2011. Another initiation was also from The King Sejong Institute which had been established in Bau-Bau in 2011 to teach Hangul to locals but abandoned its offices after a year of operation in 2012. It reopened them in 2022.
In January 2020, the publication of the first Cia-Cia dictionary in Hangeul was announced and published in December 2021. As of 2024, Hangeul remains in use in schools and on local signs. Due to the revitalization project is succeeded, it is received the international attentions, including Indonesia and South Korea and many Indonesians dub this region as “Korean village”.
Despite this, there are pros and contras among the revitalization project of this language. Some say that this project will protect or save their language from the dead, and some others say with the foreign intervention, it will damage their identity and culture. Some experts argued that choosing Hangeul over Perso-Arabic script, showed a lack of consultation with the broader Cia-Cia community and surrounding regions. However, with the implementation of Hangeul, people say our Cia-Cia language has become global.
An example of the Cia-Cia sentence in Hangeul, Latin, and English:
- Hangeul: 아디 세링 빨리 노논또 뗄레ᄫᅵ시. 아마노 노뽀옴바에 이아 나누몬또 뗄레ᄫᅵ시 꼴리에 노몰렝오.
- Latin: Adi sering pali nononto televisi. Amano nopo'ombae ia nanumonto televisi kolie nomolengo.
- English: Adi often watches television. His father advises him not to watch too much TV.
Sources:
Ethnologue. Cia-Cia. Published in 11 November 2024.
Noorduyn, J. 1991. A critical survey of studies on the languages of Sulawesi. page 131.
Fino Boeton. Seperti Ini Awal Mula Suku Cia-cia Menggunakan Aksara Korea. Kumparan. Published in 17 July 2011.
ABC Australia. Indigenous Indonesians use Korean letters to save a dialect. Published in 11 January 2024.
Trisna Wulandari. Bahasa Daerah di Sulawesi Pakai Aksara Korea, Ini Alasannya. DetikEdu. Published in 20 July 2022.
The Chosun Ilbo. Adoption of Hangeul by Indonesian Tribe Hits Snag. Published in 10 October 2011.
Yi, Whan-woo. Sejong Institute withdrawal to leave Cia-Cia out in cold. The Korea Times. Published in 30 June 2017.
So-hyun, Kim. [Hello Hangeul] Sharing the Korean alphabet with the world. The Korea Herald. Published in 5 January 2024.
Korea Bizwire. Indonesian Minority to Publish Hangul Dictionary to Preserve Ethnic Language. Published in 26 March 2023.
Mulyaman, Darynaufal and Virgianita, Asra and Candra, Darang Sahdana. 2021. Perception of South Korean International Aid by Cia-Cia Tribe Students in Southeast Sulawesi,Indonesia. Jurnal Global & Strategis, 15 (1). pp. 187-217. ISSN 2442 9600.
찌아찌아 ᄙᅡ뽀코어-인도네시아어-한국어 사전 [Kamus bahasa Ciacia Laporo – Indonesia – Korea] (in Cia-Cia, Indonesian, and Korean). Seoul: Youkrack Books. 27 December 2021. ISBN 979-11-6742-261-3. OCLC 1361784532.
Suhartono, Muktita. An Indonesian Tribe's Language Gets an Alphabet: Korea's. New York Times. Published in 5 November 2024.
Yu, Jae-Yeon. 印尼 소수민족, '한글' 공식 문자로 채택. No Cut News. Published in 15 November 2021.
Lee, Ho-Young; Hwang, Hyo-sung; Abidin. 2009. 바하사 찌아찌아 1 [Bahasa Cia-Cia 1]. Hunminjeongeum Society of Korea.
Todayonline – Singapore. Indigenous Indonesians use Korean letters to save dialect. Published in 24 December 2023.
