LDC Australia & Oceania 7/7: Sasak
Linguistic Diversity Challenge Australia & Oceania
What is the language called in English and the language itself?
Sasak, Lombok
Where is the language spoken?
It is spoken on Lombok island, West Nusa Tenggara province, Indonesia
How many people speak the language? Is it endangered?
The language is spoken by roughly 2.6 million native speakers, but it might become endangered within one or two generations nonetheless
Speakers perceive their language as less prestigious, so they often switch to Indonesian to create their identity such as being educated or come from the city. [...] Indonesian is the national language and has been strongly imposed in many of the domains (ELP)
Which language family does it belong to? What are some of its relative languages?
Austronesian (1277) >> Malayo-Polynesian (1257) >> Malayo-Sumbawan (78) >> North and East Malayo-Sumbawan (74) >> Bali-Sasak-Sumbawa (3) >> Sasak-Sumbawa (2) >> Sasak; the most famous close relative is Balinese
What writing system does the language use?
Traditionally, Sasak had its own writing system which is closely related to the Balinese script (see links); nowadays, however, it is mostly written with the Latin alphabet, following Indonesian orthography standards
What kind of grammatical features does the language have? What is its typological profile?
It is your typical Western Malayo-Polynesian language with a few “but”s; it has a focus-style alignment, but it has mostly fee word order; it has few prefixes and suffixes but a fairly impressive set of clitics; and to add some distinct flavor, it has a politeness level system reminiscent of Balinese or Javanese
What does the language sound like?
What do you personally find interesting about the language?
A former colleague of mine (when I was still teaching at the dept. of anthropology in Münster) was (probably still is) married to a Sasak.
I made this post upon special request from @ajengnh.
(re)sources
https://phoible.org/languages/sasa1249
https://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/sasa1249
https://omniglot.com/writing/sasak.htm
https://lingdy.aa-ken.jp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/140227-intl-symp-and-ws_peter_k_austin_paper.pdf
http://www.language-archives.org/language/sas
http://odin.linguistlist.org/igt_urls.php?lang=sas
http://endangeredlanguages.com/lang/10451
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasak_language
