According to linguist
James Sneddon, the language is "one of the most isolated languages", spoken in southeast Minahasa,[6] while linguist
Robert Blust situated it, along with the others of the Minahasan group, near
Lake Tondano, "in the northern peninsula of Sulawesi".[7]
^Sneddon, James N. Proto-Minahasan: phonology, morphology, and wordlist. Canberra: Dept. of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, 1978. pp. 5, 54-57.
Further reading
Brickell, Timothy C. (2018). "Tonsawang (Toundanow), North Sulawesi, Indonesia — Language Contexts". In:
Peter K. Austin (ed.). Language Documentation and Description, vol 16. London: EL Publishing. pp. 55-85.
ISSN1740-6234.
Brickell, Timothy C. (2020). "Language contact in North Sulawesi: Preliminary observations". In: Thomas J. Conners and Atsuko Utsumi, eds. Aspects of regional varieties of Malay. NUSA 68: 159–190. Permanent URL:
http://repository.tufs.ac.jp/handle/94893; doi:
https://doi.org/10.15026/94893
Rorong, Ferdy Dj; Lensun, Sherly; Sompotan, Amelia Gladys; Pandi, Helena; Sambeka; Fince Leny; Aror, Susanti. "Tonsawang Language Speech Acts in Traditional Medicine". In: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Social Sciences (ICSS 2018). Atlantis Press, 2018. pp. 903-907.
ISBN978-94-6252-588-7. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.2991/icss-18.2018.187.
Utsumi, Atsuko (2018). The Tonsawang language’s basic morphology and syntactic features. Paper presented at The Fourteenth International Conference of Austronesian Linguistics (14-ICAL). July 17-20. Antananarivo: Universitè di Antananarivo.