Wetarese is an
Austronesian language of
Wetar
Wetar is a tropical island which belongs to the Indonesian province of Maluku and is the largest island of the Maluku Barat Daya Islands (literally ''Southwest Islands'') of the Maluku Islands. It lies east of the Lesser Sunda Islands, which i ...
, an island in the south
Maluku, Indonesia, and of the nearby islands
Liran
Liran ( id, Pulau Liran, ) is a small island off the southwest coast of Wetar Island, Indonesia. Administratively it is part of West Wetar District (''Kecamatan Wetar Barat'') within the Southwest Maluku Regency (''Kabupaten Maluku Barat Daya''). ...
and
Atauro
Atauro ( pt, Ilha de Ataúro, Tetum and Indonesian: ''Pulau Atauro'' or ''Ata'uro''), also known as Kambing Island ( id, Pulau Kambing), is an island and municipality ( pt, MunicÃpio Ataúro, links=no, tet, MunisÃpiu Atauro, links=no or ...
, the latter island separate from the mainland of East Timor, north of Dili.
Background
The four identified principal varieties of Wetarese on Wetar – Aputai, Iliʼuun, Parai and Tugun – are distinct enough that some may consider them to be different languages. Half of Wetarese speakers live on the island of Atauro in East Timor, where three closely related dialects (presumably of Iliuun) are spoken: 'Rahesuk' (''Rasua'') in the center, 'Resuk' (''Hresuk'') in the southeast, and 'Adabe' (''Raklungu'') in the southwest.
''Dadua'' in the extreme north is a subdialect of Rahesuk, and has been reported to be intelligible with the Iliuun of Liran Island. About half the Dadua population has moved to Timor, on the coast of
Manatuto district
Manatuto (, ) is one of the municipalities (formerly districts) of East Timor, located in the central part of the country. It has a population of 45,541 (Census 2010) and an area of 1,783.3 km². The capital of the municipality is also n ...
, where it has undergone influence from Galoli.
Wetarese is closely related to
Galoli
The Galoli, or Galolen, are a people of East Timor with a population of about 50,000, primarily along the northern coast of the district of Manatuto. To the west lies the Mambai people. There is an old colony on the southern coast of Wetar islan ...
, spoken on the north coast of
East Timor
East Timor (), also known as Timor-Leste (), officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is an island country in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the exclave of Oecusse on the island's north-w ...
and by an immigrant community on the south coast of Wetar.
"language"
The Raklungu dialect of Atauro, or ''Kluun Hahan Adabe'', was mistaken for a Papuan language by Antonio de Almeida (1966) and reported as "Adabe" in Wurm & Hattori (1981). Many subsequent sources propagated this error, showing a Papuan language on Atauro Island.
[''Ethnologue'' (2013), for example, shows "Adabe" being spoken on central Atauro, in the area of Raklungu, and lists the population of all three dialects of Atauro Wetarese as being Papuan Adabe.] Geoffrey Hull
Geoffrey Stephen Hull (born 6 September 1955) is an Australian linguist, ethnologist and historian who has made contributions to the study of Romance, Celtic, Slavonic, Semitic, Austronesian and Papuan languages, in particular to the relationshi ...
, director of research for the ''Instituto Nacional de LinguÃstica'' in East Timor, describes only Wetarese being spoken on Ataúro Island, and was unable to find any evidence of a non-Austronesian language there.
Phonology
The following represents the Tugun dialect:
Consonants
* /v/ may also be heard as
in free variation.
* /r/ is mainly heard as
in word-final position or in slower speech, it is heard as
¾elsewhere.
* /Ê”/ only occurs in word-medial positions.
Vowels
* Sounds /e u/ are also heard as
› ÊŠ
Citations
References
*
External links
Survey of languages of East Timor
Timor–Babar languages
Languages of East Timor
Languages of the Maluku Islands
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