Gorontalo language
Gorontalo language
The Gorontalo language (also called Hulontalo) is a language spoken in Gorontalo Province, Sulawesi, Indonesia by the Gorontalo people and Polahi people. With around one million speakers (2000 census), it is a major language of northern Sulawesi.
Considerable lexical influence comes from Malay, Arabic, Portuguese, Dutch, and the North Halmahera languages. The Gorontalo region used to be controlled by the Sultanate of Ternate. Manado Malay and Indonesian are also spoken in the area. Despite its relatively large number of speakers, Gorontalo is under much pressure from Malay varieties, especially in urban settings.
Sizable Gorontalo communities can be found in Manado, the capital of North Sulawesi, as well as Jakarta.
Classification
The Gorontalo language belongs to the Gorontalic language family, which is part of the Gorontalo-Mongondow languages, a branch of the Malayo-Polynesian languages, which, in turn, is a branch of the Austronesian languages.
Languages that are related to Gorontalo include Suwawa, Bolango, Buol, Bintauna, Kaidipang, and Lolak.
Dialects
Musa Kasim et al.
“Gorontalo language” enters the record as gorontalo language. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Gorontalo and language can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2501174. Authority coordinates are 0.667, 123.000. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2000.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gorontalo language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.