Cia-Cia

Cia-Cia is a member of the Celebic branch of the Malayo-Polynesian language family. It is spoken by about 80,000 people on Buton Island, a part of Indonesia to the south east of Sualwesi. Most Cia-Cia speakers live in and around the town of Bau-Bau, on the soutern tip of Buton, and there are also speakers on Binongko and Batu Atas Islands.

Cia-Cia, which is also known as Buton(ese) or Butung, has several dialects, including Kaesabu, Sampolawa, Wabula and Masiri. It is closely related to Wolio, which many Cia-Cia speakers also speak.

Cia-Cia was originally written with the Gundul script, a version of the Arabic script, and is now written with the Latin alphabet.

Since 2009 some students in Bau-Bau have been taught to write Cia-Cia with a version of the Korean Hangeul alphabet using a textbook written by Lee Ho-young, a linguistics professor at Seoul National University. The idea of using Hangeul to write Cia-Cia was first proposed in 2007 by Professor Chun Tai-hyun, a professor of Malay and Indonesian linguistics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul.