I am Saipul Rapi.  My nick name is ipul; however, my families, neighbors called me ipu’.  It is the makasar dialect. I was born in Gowa on October 10.  My father and mother are makassar ethnic. My grandfather, grandmother, grand-grand father and mother were also Makassar ethnic. In our family, we only speak Makassar as daily language, mother tongue.  We only use Indonesian language to communicate with non-makassar speakers. However, mostly Makassar people including my family are not really fluent in speaking bahasa.  Their dialect and accent sound funny because every word ending with “n” will sound “ng”. For example, eat means makan in bahasa and for Makassar sound “makang”.  And this dialect becomes a characteristic of Makassar ethnic when they use bahasa in any conversation.  It sounds funny. And I think there are a lot of people cannot speak bahasa because they never go to school.      

Makassar language is in the Austronesian language family, Malayo-Polynesian sub-family, South Sulawesi language group,and Makassar sub-group. Makassar language is only used in daily speaking, and it is not an official language. Bahasa Indonesia is the official language of the government and education system. Makassar is written in both roman characters and in the lontara syllabary, both easily found together at every infrastructure such as street names and buildings.  Lontara is from Palmyra palm, lontar.