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Tetum (also Tetun) is an Austronesian language, one of the two official languages of East Timor. Some of its dialects have been greatly influenced by Portuguese, the other official language of the country, especially in their lexicon, but also in aspects of their grammar.
History and dialects Tetum has four dialects: Tetun-Belu and Tetun-Terik are not spoken or well understood outside their home territories. Tetun-Prasa is the form of Tetum that is spoken throughout East Timor. Although Portuguese was the official language of Portuguese Timor until 1975, Tetun-Prasa has always been the predominant lingua franca in the eastern part of the island. In the fifteenth century, before the arrival of the Portuguese, Tetum had spread through central and eastern Timor as a contact language under the aegis of the Belunese-speaking Kingdom of Wehali, at that time the most powerful kingdom in the island. The Portuguese (present in Timor from c. 1556) made most of their settlements in the west, where Dawan was spoken, and it was not until 1769, when the capital was moved from Lifau (Oecussi) to Dili that they began to promote Tetum as an inter-regional language in their colony. Timor was one of the few colonies of Lisbon where a local language, and not a form of Portuguese, became the lingua franca: this is because Portuguese rule was indirect rather than direct, the Europeans governing through local kings who embraced Catholicism and became vassals of the King of Portugal.* When Indonesia occupied East Timor in 1975, declaring it "the Republic's 27th Province", the use of Portuguese was banned, and Indonesian was imposed on the Timorese, but the Catholic Church adopted Tetum as its liturgical language, making it a focus for cultural and national identity.* After East Timor regained its independence in 2002, Tetum and Portuguese were reinstated as official languages. In addition to regional varieties of Tetum in East Timor, there are variations in vocabulary and pronunciation, partly due to Portuguese and Indonesian influence. The Tetum spoken by East Timorese migrants in Portugal and Australia is more Portuguese-influenced, as many of those speakers were not educated in Indonesian. Indigenous The Tetum name for East Timor is Timor Lorosa'e, which means "Timor of the rising sun", or, less poetically, "East Timor"; lorosa'e comes from loro "sun" and sa'e "to rise, to go up". The noun for "word" is liafuan, from lia "voice" and fuan "fruit". Some more words in Tetum: From Portuguese
From Malay Words derived from Malay include: Numerals
Basic phrases Grammar In Tetum, there are no genders or verb conjugations, and no articles, so fetu can be transtaled as "woman", "a woman", or "the woman", depending on the context. There is no verb "to be" as such, although the word la'ós, which translates as "not to be", is used for negation: Timor-oan la'ós Indonézia-oan. "The Timorese are not Indonesians." Lia-indonézia la'ós sira-nia lian. "Indonesian is not their language." The word maka, which roughly translates as "who is" or "what is", can be used with an adjective for emphasis: Xanana Gusmão maka ita-nia Prezidente. "It is Xanana Gusmão who is our President." João sé maka gosta serveja. "John is the one who likes beer." The interrogative is formed by using the word ka "or" or ka lae "or not". O bulak ka? - "Are you crazy?" O gosta ha'u ka lae? - "Don't you like me?" The plural is not normally used for nouns, although the word sira "they" can express it, if necessary. fetu - "woman/women" fetu sira - "women" However, the plural ending -(e)s of nouns of Portuguese origin was retained. Estadus Unidus - "United States" (from Estados Unidos) Nasoens Unidas - "United Nations" (from Nações Unidas) To turn a noun into an adjective, the word oan is added to it. malae - "foreigner" malae-oan - "foreign" Thus, "Timorese" is Timor-oan, as opposed to the country of Timor, rai-Timor. Although inferred from context whenever possible, the past tense can be expressed by placing the adverb ona "already" at the end of a sentence. Ha'u han - "I eat / I ate". Ha'u han etu - "I eat rice / I ate rice". Ha'u han etu ona - "I ate rice / I've (already) eaten rice". Like Malay, Tetum has two forms of "we", ami (equivalent to Malay kami) which is exclusive, e.g. "I and they", and ita (equivalent to Malay kita), which is inclusive, e.g. "you, I, and they". ami-nia karreta - "our family's car" ita-nia rain - "our country" The word nia forms the possessive. The genitive is formed with nian, so that: povu Timór Lorosa'e nian - "the people of East Timor" Orthography and Phonology As Tetum did not have any official recognition or support under either Portuguese or Indonesian rule, it is only recently that a standardised orthography has been established by the Timorese National Institute of Linguistics (INL). However, there are still widespread variations in spelling. The current orthography originates from the spelling reforms unertaken by Fretilin in 1974, when it launched literacy campaigns across East Timor, and also from the system used by the Catholic Church when it adopted Tetum as its liturgical language during the Indonesian occupation. These involved the transcription of many Portuguese words that were formerly written in their original spelling, for example, educação → edukasaun "education", and colonialismo → kolonializmu "colonialism". More recent reforms by the INL include the replacement of the digraphs nh and lh (borrowed from Portuguese, where they stand for the phonemes and ) by ñ and ll, respectively (as in Spanish), to avoid confusion with the sequences and , which also exist in Tetum. Thus, senhor "sir" became señór, and trabalhador "worker" became traballadór. Some linguists favoured ny (used by Catalan) and ly for these sounds, but these spellings were rejected for being similar to the Indonesian system. However, most speakers actually pronounce ñ and ll as and , respectively (reduced to , after ), not as the palatal consonants of Portuguese and Spanish. Hence, señór, liña are prounounced , , and traballadór, kartilla are pronounced , . The sound , which is not indigenous to Tetum, but appears in many loanwords from Portuguese and Malay, often changed to , written j, in old Tetum: for example meja "table" from Portuguese mesa, and kemeja "shirt" from Portuguese camisa. In modern Tetum, and (written z and j, respectively) may occur in free variation. For instance, the Portuguese-derived word ezemplu "example" is pronounced as by some speakers, and, conversely, Janeiru "January" is pronounced as . The sound , also not native to the language, often shifted to , as in serbisu "work" from Portuguese serviço. Name The English spelling "Tetum" is derived from Portuguese, rather than from modern Tetum orthography. Consequently, some people regard "Tetun" as more appropriate.* Although it coincides with the favoured Indonesian spelling, "Tetun" has also been used by some native speakers of Tetum, such as José Ramos Horta and Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, despite the fact that the spelling with m has a longer history in English. Similar disagreements over nomenclature have emerged regarding the names of other languages, such as Swahili/Kiswahili and Punjabi/Panjabi. See also | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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