Makassarese language in the context of "Jeneponto Regency"

The native Makassar, Macassar, Makassarese, Makassan (in Thai), or Macassan (in Australian English), are one of the Austronesian people native to the southern Celebic peninsular regions (concentrated around the Makassar area) in Indonesia. The Makassar people are rich in culture and they are acknowledged for their traditional culinary and maritime knowledges, together with the Bugis, its closest related ethnic group. The Makassar people speak various Makassaric languages, including Standard Makassarese, as well as Standard Indonesian and Makassar Malay.

The Phinisi, a worldwide well-known boatbuilding of Southern Sulawesi-origin, a joint invention of Bugis-Makassar people, is internationally inscribed as the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

The caves in the Maros-Pangkep karst or Leang-Leang Caves (from the Makassarese word for "many caves") are located in Maros Regency, South Sulawesi, Indonesia, roughly one hour north of Makassar city. The village of Leang-Leang lies in a limestone karst region densely packed with caves that contain paintings from the Paleolithic considered to be the earliest figurative art in the world, dated to at least 45,500 years ago.

Archaeological excavations have revealed evidence of human presence in several of these caves dating back approximately 5,000 years (circa 3000 BCE), predating the first Austronesian migrations from Taiwan to the Philippines and the broader Indonesian archipelago, which began around 2000 BCE.Among the findings are prehistoric paintings, including red and ochre negative hand stencils. In the Maros cave complex, some of these artworks have been dated to around 40,000 years ago. Similar techniques can be seen at prehistoric sites in Europe, such as the Pech Merle cave in the Lot region of France, dated to around 25,000 years ago.

South Sulawesi (Indonesian: Sulawesi Selatan; Lontara: ᨔᨘᨒᨓᨙᨔᨗ ᨔᨛᨒᨈ) is a province in the southern peninsula of Sulawesi, Indonesia. The Selayar Islands archipelago to the south of Sulawesi is also part of the province. The capital and largest city is Makassar. The province is bordered by Central Sulawesi and West Sulawesi to the north, the Gulf of Bone and Southeast Sulawesi to the east, Makassar Strait to the west, and Flores Sea to the south.

The 2010 census estimated the population as 8,032,551, which makes South Sulawesi the most populous province on the island (46% of the population of Sulawesi is in South Sulawesi), and the sixth most populous province in Indonesia. At the 2020 Census, this had risen to 9,073,509, and the official estimate as of mid-2024 was 9,463,390 (comprising 4,701,970 males and 4,761,410 females). The main ethnic groups in South Sulawesi are the Buginese, Makassarese and Torajan. The economy of the province is based on agriculture, fishing, and the mining of gold, magnesium, iron, and other metals. The pinisi, a traditional Indonesian two-masted sailing ship, is still used widely by the Buginese and Makassarese, mostly for inter-insular transportation, cargo, and fishing purposes within the Indonesian archipelago.

The Lontara script (ᨒᨚᨈᨑ), also known as the Bugis script, Bugis-Makassar script, or Urupu Sulapa’ Eppa’ "four-cornered letters", is one of Indonesia's traditional scripts developed in the South Sulawesi and West Sulawesi region. The script is primarily used to write the Buginese language, followed by Makassarese and Mandar. Closely related variants of Lontara are also used to write several languages outside of Sulawesi such as Bima, Ende, and Sumbawa. The script was actively used by several South Sulawesi societies for day-to-day and literary texts from at least mid-15th Century CE until the mid-20th Century CE, before its function was gradually supplanted by the Latin alphabet. Today the script is taught in South Sulawesi Province as part of the local curriculum, but with very limited usage in everyday life.

Lontara is an abugida with 23 basic letters. The script is a descendant of Brahmi through Kawi intermediaries. As of other Brahmic scripts, each letter represents a syllable with an inherent vowel /a/, which can be changed with diacritics. The direction of writing is left to right. Traditionally, the script is written without word breaks (scriptio continua) and with little to no punctuation. A typical Lontara text may contain many ambiguities as coda syllables, or consonants at the end of syllables, are normally not written and must be supplied by readers from context.

The Makassar languages are a group of languages spoken in the southern part of South Sulawesi Province, Indonesia, and make up one of the branches of the South Sulawesi subgroup in the Austronesian language family. The most prominent member of this group is Makassarese, with over two million speakers in the city of Makassar and neighboring areas.

The status of the Makassar languages, other than Makassarese, as distinct languages is not universally accepted. In older classifications, as well as in recent studies by local linguists, they are considered to be dialects of the Makassarese language.