Makassar (sometimes spelled Makasar or Macassar) is both a language and a writing system used by the people in South Sulawesi island (Celebes) in Indonesia.

The Makassar language is a member of the Austronesian language family.

Although Makassarese is now often written with the Roman alphabet, it is still widely written in its own distinctive script, also called Lontara, which once was used also to write important documents in Bugis and Mandar , two related language from Sulawesi.

The Makassar symbols are written using mostly straight oblique lines and dots. In spite of its is quite distinctive appearance, it is derived from the ancient Brahmi scripts of India. Like other descendants of that script, each consonant has an inherent vowel "a", which is not marked. Other vowels can be indicated by adding one of five diacritics above, below, or on either side of each consonant.

External links

• Lontara and Makassar scripts
• Lontara Alphabet in Unicode