A comparative study of Mawasangka and Wakatobi language in South East Sulawesi

This research aims at investigating the relationship between Mawasangka language (ML) and Wakatobi language (WL) in Southeast Sulawesi. This research was conducted based on qualitative and quantitative methods (mixed methods). The qualitative analysis shows that both languages have similar vowel and consonants sounds, and phonetic long vocoid sounds.  Besides, both languages have unique bilabial implosive consonant /?/, alveolar implosive /?/, velar fricative /?/; and clusters of /ns/, /nt/, /nd/, /mb/, /?k/, /?g/, and /mp/; and all syllables are opened or categorized as vocalist languages. Both languages also have perfected phoneme correspondences. In addition, the result of the quantitative approach using the lexicostastics technique shows that the relationship of ML-WL is 43,43%. Based on the percentage, ML and WL show closed relationship which is categorized as different languages from the same language family