Musi () is a
Malayic variety spoken primarily in parts of
South Sumatra,
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, ...
. While the name ''Musi'' in the broad sense can also refer to the wider
Musi dialect network comprising both Upper Musi and
Palembang–Lowland clusters,
it is locally used as an
endonym
An endonym (also known as autonym ) is a common, name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate them ...
specific to the variety spoken in the upstream parts of
Musi River.
Classification
Based on
lexicostatistical analyses, mappings of
sound change
In historical linguistics, a sound change is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chan ...
s, and
mutual intelligibility
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intelli ...
tests, classify Malayic varieties in southern Sumatra into two dialect groups, namely 1)
South Barisan Malay (also called ''Central Malay'' or ''Middle Malay'') and 2)
Musi. The Musi grouping can be further divided into two clusters: 1) Upper Musi, containing Musi Proper (i.e. the lect referred to as "Musi" in local usage), Rawas, Pegagan, and
Col, and 2) Palembang–Lowland, containing
Palembang and Lowland subcluster (Belide, Lematang Ilir, and Penesak varieties).
All Upper Musi lects lost
Proto-Malayic *h word-medially, including between like vowels, e.g. *dahan > 'branch'. As with other Southern Sumatran Malayic lects, *r is sometimes reflected as
and
� contrasting with a velar/uvular rhotic. More uniquely, Upper Musi lects evince 1) the loss of initial *r, e.g. *rumah 'house' > and *rusa 'deer' > ; 2) the shift of final *-ri > , e.g. *jari 'finger' > and *duri 'thorn' > , and 3) the merger of final *-ar, *-ur, and *-ir > -
(É°) e.g. *akar 'root' > , *bibir 'lip' > , and *kapur 'lime' > . The last merger did not happen in Rawas, as it only reflects the *-ar > ''-o'' shift. In addition, while most Upper Musi lects shifted final *a >
Rawas shifted the vowel to
Musi Proper is spoken throughout parts of
Musi Banyuasin and
Musi Rawas regencies in
South Sumatra. Internally, it can be divided into three subdialects, namely 1) Sekayu, 2) Kelingi, and 3) Penukal, each roughly corresponding to the names of the geographical area where they are spoken. Sekayu is spoken in and around the town of
Sekayu, Musi Banyuasin, and is the central variety. Kelingi is spoken in parts of
Musi Rawas Regency and neighbors the Sindang Kelingi subdialect of Col to the west. Meanwhile, Penukal speech area covers most of
Penukal Abab Lematang Ilir Regency, bordering to its south the Lowland lects of Lematang Ilir and Belide, as well as the Highland (Central Malay) lect of Benakat.
References
Citations
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Musi language
Malayic languages
Languages of Indonesia