Celebic

The Celebic languages form a primary branch of the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of Austronesian, spread across the island of Sulawesi, formerly called Celebes. They account for almost every language of Central and Southeast Sulawesi, and make up the island's largest language group by number of tongues.

Their main divisions are the Kaili-Pamona and Tomini-Tolitoli groups and the Eastern Celebic cluster. Linguists trace the family to a reconstructed Proto-Celebic ancestor marked by regular sound changes from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian, among them the loss of initial *h and the merger of *d into *r.

The coastal sultanates drew these languages into the spice trade: the Sultanate of Buton, founded on the island off Sulawesi's southeast peninsula in the 1300s, became an Islamic tributary center within the sphere of the Sultanate of Ternate during the 1500s.