The Batak Toba language is an Austronesian / Malayo-Polynesian language that originates from Northern Sumatra, in Indonesia, mostly west of Lake Toba. There are approximately 2,000,000 speakers worldwide. There is a traditional Batak Toba script alphabet referenced below. Batak designates two distinct peoples, one living in Indonesia, the other in the Philippines. ... Sumatra (also spelled Sumatera) is the sixth largest island of the world (approximately 470,000 km²) and is the largest island entirely in Indonesia (two larger islands, Borneo and New Guinea, are partially in Indonesia). ... View of Lake Toba Lake Toba is a large lake, 100km long and 30km wide, in the middle of the northern part of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. ...

Name of the language

The name of this language arises from a complex history of ethnic identity in colonial and post-colonial Indonesia. Some refer to the language as "Toba Batak" and others, as "Batak Toba." At first blush the reversal of nouns may seem like a distintion without a difference. But it matters.

The distinction is illustrated by a jocular comparison to the English language. English, too, uses double-noun phrases. In English, the first noun descends to adjective form. For instance, consider the term Toilet Paper. The Toilet becomes an adjective to qualify the type of paper. Toilet is a plumbing device, and Paper a flat medium of compressed plant fiber. These nouns spoken in the usual order (Paper then Toilet) refer to a delicately paper used clean the anus before dissolving in water. The same two nouns spoken in the opposite order create an absurd meaning ("Paper Toilet"). Reversed, the term paper qualifies the type of toilet since the first noun desecends to adjective form. A roll of toilet paper. ... Toilet found in a Boeing 747 aircraft A toilet is a plumbing fixture and a disposal system primarily intended for the disposal of the bodily wastes; urine, fecal matter, vomit, semen and menses. ... Piece of A4 paper Paper is a thin material produced by the amalgamation of plant fibres, which are subsequently held together without extra binder, largely by hydrogen bonds and to a large degree by fiber entanglement. ... Toilet found in a Boeing 747 aircraft A toilet is a plumbing fixture and a disposal system primarily intended for the disposal of the bodily wastes; urine, fecal matter, vomit, semen and menses. ... Piece of A4 paper Paper is a thin material produced by the amalgamation of plant fibres, which are subsequently held together without extra binder, largely by hydrogen bonds and to a large degree by fiber entanglement. ... Piece of A4 paper Paper is a thin material produced by the amalgamation of plant fibres, which are subsequently held together without extra binder, largely by hydrogen bonds and to a large degree by fiber entanglement. ... Toilet found in a Boeing 747 aircraft A toilet is a plumbing fixture and a disposal system primarily intended for the disposal of the bodily wastes; urine, fecal matter, vomit, semen and menses. ...

The term Batak refers to a population larger than that which exclusively speaks Batak Toba. There are seven Batak languages attributed to this population. The term Toba refers to the geography surrounding and to the east of Lake Toba. So, whether one prefers to describe the langauge as "Batak Toba" or "Toba Batak" depends upon whether one intends to depict the geography by the language, or the people by the geography. Batak designates two distinct peoples, one living in Indonesia, the other in the Philippines. ... This page meets Wikipedias criteria for speedy deletion. ... View of Lake Toba Lake Toba is a large lake, 100km long and 30km wide, in the middle of the northern part of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. ...

To complicate matters for English speakers, the Batak Toba language itself uses a reverese noun-adjective descension order. Thus in the language itself, the second noun descends to adjective form and the first remains a noun. Hence the term "Batak Toba" refers to a population by their geography of origination. To some, that is more polite than the term "Toba Batak" which seemingly refers to a Geography by the type of people who originated there. But in light of the noun-adjective reversal in English, importance of noun order is lost amid the reversals and it becomes difficult to ascertain which order seems more polite. But to a speaker of the language, the order matters.

References

• Batak alphabets, including Batak Toba (published by Simon Ager, author of Omniglot)

• Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Available online at http://www.ethnologue.com/. Summary at [1].

• Truetype font for Batak Toba language (developed by Uli Kozok of the University of Hawaii)

• Example translation of Biblical Scripture (published by the Language Museum, a site published by Zhang Hong, an internet consultant and amateur linguist in Beijing China)

• Musgrave, Simon. Non-subject Arguments in Indonesian: Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE. See page 112 (doc page 101) and reference to Cole, Peter & Gabriella Hermon (2000) Word order and binding in Toba Batak. Paper presented at AFLA 7, Amsterdam