Padoe is an Austronesian language of the Celebic branch. It was traditionally spoken in the rolling plains south of Lake Matano in South Sulawesi province. In the 1950s, a portion of the Padoe-speaking population fled to Central Sulawesi to escape the ravages of the Darul Islam / Tentara Islam Indonesia (DI/TII) revolt.[2] In 1991, it was estimated there were 5,000 speakers of Padoe in all locations.[3]
Padoe is classified as a member of the Bungku-Tolaki group of languages, and shares its closest affinities with the Mori Atas language.[4][5] The Padoe language has sometimes been included with Mori Atas and Mori Bawah under the broader cover term Mori.
^Mead, David. 1998. Proto-Bungku-Tolaki: Reconstruction of its phonology and aspects of its morphosyntax. (PhD dissertation, Rice University, 1998) p. 117
^Mead, David. 1999. The Bungku–Tolaki languages of south-eastern Sulawesi, Indonesia. Series D-91. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
