Appendix:Makasar Swadesh list

This is a Swadesh list of words in Makasar, compared with definitions in English.

For further information, including the full final version of the list, read the Wikipedia article: Swadesh list.

American linguist Morris Swadesh believed that languages changed at measurable rates and that these could be determined even for languages without written precursors. Using vocabulary lists, he sought to understand not only change over time but also the relationships of extant languages. To be able to compare languages from different cultures, he based his lists on meanings he presumed would be available in as many cultures as possible. He then used the fraction of agreeing cognates between any two related languages to compute their divergence time by some (still debated) algorithms. Starting in 1950 with 165 meanings, his list grew to 215 in 1952, which was so expansive that many languages lacked native vocabulary for some terms. Subsequently, it was reduced to 207, and reduced much further to 100 meanings in 1955. A reformulated list was published posthumously in 1971.

This list applies the common orthography that is an adjusted version of the 1975 orthography established in Ujung Pandang by the Language Body. The 1975 orthography is based on the Indonesian orthography that was established earlier. In the orthography, glottal stop is represented as k. However, since the representation can cause confusion for k is also used to represent the consonant [k], people usually use an apostrophe (') to represent the glottal stop instead.

The common orthography can be found in handwritten notes, on the occasional sign, and in the lyrics sheets of popular songs by artists like Iwan Tompo and Ismail Wahid.

• Arief, Aburaerah. 1995. Kamus Makassar–Indonesia. Yayasan YAPIK DDI, Ujung Pandang.
• Jukes, Anthony. 2006. Makassarese (basa Mangkasara’); A description of an Austronesian language of South Sulawesi. PhD thesis, University of Melbourne.