Tetum Terik, which is a more indigenous form of Tetum marked by different word choice, less foreign influence and other characteristics such asverb conjugation
Tetum Prasa ('market Tetum', from the Portuguese wordpraça meaning 'town square') orTetum Dili (given its widespread usage in the capital Dili). This is the form of Tetum (heavily influenced by Portuguese) that developed in Dili during colonial rule as local Tetum speakers came into contact with Portuguese missionaries, traders and colonial rulers. In East Timor,Tetum Dili is widely spoken fluently as a second language.
Ethnologue classifiesTetun Terik as a dialect of Tetun.[1] However, without previous contact,Tetun Dili is not immediately mutually intelligible,[4] mainly because of the large number of Portuguese origin words used in Tetun Dili.[citation needed] Besides some grammatical simplification, Tetun Dili has been greatly influenced by the vocabulary and to a small extent by the grammar ofPortuguese, the other official language of East Timor.
The English formTetum is derived from Portuguese, rather than from modern Tetum. Consequently, some people regardTetun as more appropriate.[5] Although this coincides with the favoured Indonesian form, and the variant withm has a longer history in English,Tetun has also been used by some Portuguese-educated Timorese, such asJosé Ramos-Horta andCarlos Filipe Ximenes Belo.
According to linguist Geoffrey Hull, Tetum has four dialects:[6]
Tetun-Dili, orTetun-Prasa (literally 'city Tetum'), is spoken in the capital,Dili, and its surroundings, in the north of the country. Because of its simpler grammar than other varieties of Tetun, extensive Portuguese loanwords, and supposed creole-like features,Ethnologue and some researchers classify it as a Tetun-basedcreole.[4][7][8] This position, however, is also disputed in that while Tetun-Dili may exhibit simpler grammar, this does not mean that Tetun-Dili is a creole.[10][11] According toEthnologue, there were 50,000 native Tetun-Dili speakers in East Timor in 2004 and 370,000 L2 users.[4]
Tetun-Terik is spoken in the south and southwestern coastal regions. According toEthnologue, there were 50,000 Tetun-Terik speakers in East Timor in 1995.[6]
Tetun-Belu, or the Belunese dialect, is spoken in a central strip of the island of Timor from theOmbai Strait to theTimor Sea, and is split betweenEast Timor andWest Timor, where it is considered abahasa daerah or 'regional language', with no official status inIndonesia, although it is used by theDiocese ofAtambua in Roman Catholic rites.
TheNana'ek dialect is spoken in the village ofMetinaro, on the coastal road between Dili andManatuto.
Tetun-Belu andTetun-Terik are not spoken outside their home territories.Tetun-Prasa is the form of Tetum that is spoken throughout East Timor. Although Portuguese was the official language ofPortuguese Timor until 1975,Tetun-Prasa has always been the predominantlingua 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 acontact language under the aegis of the Belunese-speakingKingdom 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, whereDawan 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 Portuguese colonies where a local language, and not a form of Portuguese, became thelingua franca: this is because Portuguese rule was indirect rather than direct, the Europeans governing through local kings who embraced Catholicism and became vassals of theKing of Portugal.[12]
Following theCarnation Revolution in Portugal in 1974,Indonesia invaded East Timor, declaring it "the Republic's 27th Province". The use of Portuguese was banned, andIndonesian was declared the sole official language, but theRoman Catholic Church adopted Tetum as its liturgical language, making it a focus for cultural and national identity.[13] After theUnited Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) took over governance in 1999, Tetun (Dili) was proclaimed the country's official language, even though according toEncartaWinkler Prins it was only spoken by about 8% of the native population at the time, while the elite (consisting of 20 to 30 families) spoke Portuguese and most adolescents had been educated in Indonesian.[14] When East Timor gained its independence in 2002, Tetum and Portuguese were declared as official languages. The 2010 census found that Tetum Prasa had 385,269 native speakers on a total population of 1,053,971, meaning that the share of native Tetum Prasa/Dili speakers had increased to 36.6% during the 2000s.[15]
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 living inPortugal andAustralia are more Portuguese-influenced, as many of those speakers were not educated in Indonesian.
The Tetum name for East Timor isTimór Lorosa'e, which means 'Timor of the rising sun', or, less poetically, 'East Timor';lorosa'e comes fromloro 'sun' andsa'e 'to rise, to go up'. The noun for 'word' isliafuan, fromlia 'voice' andfuan 'fruit'. Some more words in Tetum:
Portuguese (left) and Tetum (right). From a Portuguese course for Tetum speakers. The text says: "Our generation sometimes has difficulty distinguishing between 'j' and 'z'"
Tetum (left) and Portuguese (right). From a Portuguese course for Tetum speakers. The text says: "Some people pronounce wrongly '*meja', '*uja' and '*abuja' instead of 'mesa', 'usa' and 'abusa'."
As a result ofBazaar Malay being a regional lingua franca and ofIndonesian being a working language, many words are derived fromMalay, including:
atus 'hundred', fromratus
barak 'much', frombanyak
bele 'can', fromboleh
besi 'iron', frombesi
udan 'rain', fromhujan
dalan 'way' or 'road', fromjalan
fatu(k) 'stone', frombatu
fulan 'moon' or 'month' frombulan
malae 'foreigner', frommelayu 'Malay'
manas 'hot', frompanas
rihun 'thousand', fromribu
sala 'wrong', fromsalah
tulun 'help', fromtolong
dapur 'kitchen', fromdapur
uma 'house', fromrumah
In addition, as a legacy ofIndonesian rule, other words of Malay origin have entered Tetum, through Indonesian.
However, Tetum speakers often useMalay/Indonesian orPortuguese numbers instead, such asdelapan oroito 'eight' instead ofualu, especially for numbers over one thousand.[citation needed]
Tetum has many hybrid words, which arecombinations of indigenous and Portuguese words. These often include an indigenous Tetum verb, with a Portuguese suffix-dór (similar to '-er'). For example:
han ('to eat')handór – glutton
hemu ('to drink')hemudór – heavy drinker
hateten ('to say')hatetendór – chatterbox, talkative person
The second person singular pronounÓ is used generally with children, friends or family, while with strangers or people of higher social status,Ita orIta boot is used.[17]
Like other Austronesian languages, Tetum has two forms ofwe,ami (equivalent to Malaykami) which is exclusive, e.g. "I and they", andita (equivalent to Malaykita), which isinclusive, e.g. "you, I, and they".
Nouns derived from verbs or adjectives are usually formed withaffixes, for example thesuffix-na'in, similar to "-er" in English.
hakerek 'write' →hakerek-na'in 'writer'
The suffix-na'in can also be used with nouns, in the sense of 'owner'.
uma 'house' →uma-na'in 'householder'
In more traditional forms of Tetum, thecircumfixma(k)- -k is used instead of-na'in. For example, the nouns 'sinner' or 'wrongdoer' can be derived from the wordsala as eithermaksalak, orsala-na'in. Only theprefixma(k)- is used when the root word ends with a consonant; for example, the noun 'cook' or 'chef' can be derived from the wordte'in asmakte'in as well aste'in-na'in.
The suffix-teen (from the word for 'dirt' or 'excrement') can be used with adjectives to form derogatory terms:
Tetum does not have separate masculine and feminine gender, hencenia (similar toia/dia/nya in Malay) can mean either 'he', 'she' or 'it'.
Different forms for the genders only occur in Portuguese-derived adjectives, henceobrigadu ('thank you') is used by men, andobrigada by women. The masculine and feminine forms of other adjectives derived from Portuguese are sometimes used with Portuguese loanwords, particularly by Portuguese-educated speakers of Tetum.
The most commonly usedprepositions in Tetum are the verbsiha ('have', 'possess', 'specific locative') andbaa/ba ('go', 'to', 'for'). Most prepositional concepts of English are expressed by nominal phrases formed by usingiha, the object and the position (expressed by a noun),optionally with the possessivenia.
InTetun-Terik, verbs inflect when they begin with a vowel or consonant h. In this casemutation of the first consonant occurs. For example, the verbharee ('see') inTetun-Terik would beconjugated as follows:
In the Tetum language,/a/,/i/ and/u/ tend to have relatively fixed sounds. However/e/ and/o/ vary according to the environment they are placed in, for instance the sound is slightly higher if the proceeding syllable is/u/ or/i/.[18]
All consonants appearing in parentheses are used only in loanwords.
Stops: All stops in Tetum are un-aspirated, meaning an expulsion of breath is absent. In contrast, English stops, namely 'p' 't' and 'k' are generally aspirated.
Fricatives:/v/ is an unstable voiced labio-dental fricative and tends to alternate with or is replaced by/b/; e.g.[aˈvoː] –[aˈboː] meaning 'grandparent.'[16]
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 theNational Institute of Linguistics [tet;pt] (INL). The standard orthography devised by the institute was declared official by Government Decree 1/2004 of 14 April 2004.[19] However, there are still widespread variations in spelling, one example being the wordbainhira or 'when', which has also been written asbain-hira,wainhira,waihira,uaihira. The use of⟨w⟩ or⟨u⟩ is a reflection of the pronunciation in some rural dialects ofTetun-Terik.
The current orthography originates from the spelling reforms undertaken byFretilin 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 thetranscription of many Portuguese words that were formerly written in their original spelling, for example,educação →edukasaun 'education', andcolonialismo →kolonializmu 'colonialism'.
Reforms suggested by the International Committee for the Development of East Timorese Languages (IACDETL) in 1996 included the replacement of thedigraphs⟨nh⟩ and⟨lh⟩ (borrowed from Portuguese, where they stand for the phonemes/ɲ/ and/ʎ/) with⟨n̄⟩ and⟨l̄⟩ , respectively (as in certainBasque orthographies), to avoid confusion with theconsonant clusters/nh/ and/lh/, which also occur in Tetum. Thus,senhor 'sir' becamesen̄ór, andtrabalhador 'worker' becametrabal̄adór. Later, as adopted by IACDETL and approved by the INL in 2002,⟨n̄⟩ and⟨l̄⟩ were replaced by [[⟨ñ⟩]] and [[⟨ll⟩]] (as inSpanish). Thus,sen̄ór 'sir' becameseñór, andtrabal̄adór 'worker' becametraballadór. Some linguists favoured using⟨ny⟩ (as inCatalan andFilipino) and⟨ly⟩ for these sounds, but the latter spellings were rejected for being similar to the Indonesian system, and most speakers actually pronounceñ andll as[i̯n] and[i̯l], respectively, with asemivowel[i̯] which forms adiphthong with the preceding vowel (but reduced to[n],[l] after/i/), not as thepalatal consonants of Portuguese and Spanish. Thus,señór,traballadór are pronounced[sei̯ˈnoɾ],[tɾabai̯laˈdoɾ], andliña,kartilla are pronounced[ˈlina],[kaɾˈtila]. As a result, some writers use⟨in⟩ and⟨il⟩ instead, for exampleJuinu andJuilu for June and July (Junho andJulho in Portuguese).
As well as variations in the transliteration of Portuguese loanwords, there are also variations in the spelling of indigenous words. These include the use of double vowels and theapostrophe for theglottal stop, for exampleboot →bot 'large' andki'ik →kiik 'small'.
The sound[z], which is not indigenous to Tetum but appears in many loanwords from Portuguese and Malay, often changed to[s] in old Tetum and to[ʒ] (written⟨j⟩) in the speech of young speakers: for example,meja 'table' from Portuguesemesa, andkamija 'shirt' from Portuguesecamisa. In the sociolect of Tetum that is still used by the generation educated during the Indonesian occupation,[z] and[ʒ] may occur infree variation. For instance, the Portuguese-derived wordezemplu 'example' is pronounced[eˈʒemplu] by some speakers, and converselyJaneiru 'January' is pronounced[zanˈeiru]. The sound[v], also not native to the language, often shifted to[b], as inserbisu 'work' from Portugueseserviço (also note that a modern INL convention promotes the use ofserbisu for 'work' andservisu for 'service').
^Hull, Geoffrey. (1999). Tetum, Language Manual for East Timor. Academy of East Timor Studies, Faculty of Education & Languages, University of Western Sydney Macathur.
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