Karo, referred to in Indonesia as Bahasa Karo (Karo language), is an

Austronesian language The Austronesian languages ( ) are a language family widely spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Madagascar, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan (by Taiwanese indigenous peoples). They are spoken b ...

that is spoken by the Karo people of

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

. It is used by around 600,000 people in

North Sumatra North Sumatra () is a Provinces of Indonesia, province of Indonesia located in the northern part of the island of Sumatra. Its capital and largest city is Medan on the east coast of the island. It borders Aceh to the northwest, Riau to the sou ...

. It is mainly spoken in

Karo Regency Karo Regency is a landlocked regency of North Sumatra Province of Indonesia, situated in the Barisan Mountains. The regency, which was established on 7 November 1956, covers an area of and according to the 2010 census it had a population of 350 ...

, southern parts of Deli Serdang Regency and northern parts of Dairi Regency,

. It was historically written using the Batak alphabet which is descended from the

Brahmi script Brahmi ( ; ; ISO 15919, ISO: ''Brāhmī'') is a writing system from ancient India. "Until the late nineteenth century, the script of the Aśokan (non-Kharosthi) inscriptions and its immediate derivatives was referred to by various names such as ...

of ancient India by way of the

Pallava The Pallava dynasty existed from 275 CE to 897 CE, ruling a significant portion of South India, the Deccan, also known as Tondaimandalam. The Pallavas played a crucial role in shaping in particular southern Indian history and heritage. The ...

and Old Kawi scripts, but nowadays only a tiny number of Karo can write or understand the script, and instead the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...

is used.

Classification

Karo is a Northern

Batak Batak is a collective term used to identify a number of closely related Austronesian peoples, Austronesian ethnic groups predominantly found in North Sumatra, Indonesia, who speak Batak languages. The term is used to include the Karo people ( ...

language, and is closely related to Pakpak and Alas. It is mutually unintelligible from the Southern Batak languages, such as Toba, Angkola and

Mandailing The Mandailing (also known as Mandailing Batak) people are an ethnic group in Sumatra, Indonesia that is commonly associated with the Batak people. They are found mainly in the northern section of the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. They came und ...

Dialects

There are several dialects within Karo. A major dialect boundary exists between the dialects spoken in the east and the dialects spoken in the west. These are largely distinguished according to phonological and lexical differences. Vowels in the eastern dialect are lowered and fronted in the western dialect. Similarly,

diphthong A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...

s in the eastern dialect are realised as

monophthong A monophthong ( ) is a pure vowel sound, or one whose articulation at beginning and end is relatively fixed, with the tongue moving neither up nor down and neither forward nor backward towards a new position of articulation. A monophthong can be ...

s in the western dialect.

Phonology

Karo has 17 consonant phonemes and 10 vowel phonemes.

Vowels

Consonants

Morphology

Batak Karo has productive

reduplication In linguistics, reduplication is a Morphology (linguistics), morphological process in which the Root (linguistics), root or Stem (linguistics), stem of a word, part of that, or the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The cla ...

. Full reduplication occurs mainly with open word classes and exhibits a wide range of different functions. For instance, reduplication of nouns can signify plurality ( 'bone' → 'bones') and imitation and similitude ( 'coconut shell' → 'skull'). Reduplication of verbs can encode repetition ( 'ask' → 'keep asking'), duration ( 'think' → 'ponder') or imitation ( ‘sleep’ → ‘lie down, rest’). Batak Karo has a binary contrast between actor voice and patient voice for transitive verbs and can be classified as an Indonesian-type language. Actor voice is marked with the inflectional prefix ''N-''. The prefix ''N-'' assimilates to the place of articulation of the stem that it is attached to, and is realised as before bilabial stops, before dental, alveolar and palatal stops and fricatives and �before velar stops. Patient voice is marked with the inflectional prefix ''i-''. Like other Indonesian-type languages Batak Karo also has applicatives (the suffixes ''-ken'' as a general applicative, and ''-i'' as a locative applicative).

Syntax

Batak Karo often alternate between subject-initial and predicate-initial word orders for transitive clauses, although the preference is for Actor Voice clauses to be subject-initial. Predicate-Undergoer-Actor is a common word order when the undergoer is replaced by an interrogative pronoun. In contrast, while it is possible for patient voice clauses to place the subject (the undergoer in patient voice clauses) in the initial position, predicate-initial word orders are more frequent, with the undergoer subject placed after both the predicate and the actor.

Sample

Karo English translation In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

References

Bibliography

* * * *

External links

* Paradisec archive o
recordings from a 2010 Field Methods class on Batak Karo

Indonesian to Karo Dictionary

Batak Karo Christian Bible

{{authority control Batak languages Languages of Indonesia