The Galoli, or Galolen, are a people 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 ...

with a population of about 50,000, primarily along the northern coast of the district of

Manatuto Manatuto is a city in Manatuto Municipality, East Timor. Manatuto Vila has 3,692 inhabitants (Census 2015) and is capital of the subdistrict and district Manatuto. It is on the north coast of Timor, (about as the crow flies) east of Dili, ...

. To the west lies the

Mambai Mambai may refer to: * Mambai people The Mambai (Mambae, Manbae) people are the second largest ethnic group after the Tetum Dili people in East Timor. Originally, they were known as the Maubere by the Portuguese. ''Maubere'' or ''Mau Bere'' is ...

people. There is an old colony on the southern coast 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 ...

island, the Talo, who speak the Talur dialect. Their language, also known as Galoli, is one of the Timor–Babar group of Austronesian languages. It is one of the

national language A national language is a language (or language variant, e.g. dialect) that has some connection—de facto or de jure—with a nation. There is little consistency in the use of this term. One or more languages spoken as first languages in the te ...

s designated by the constitution of East Timor. Because the area was used as a trading center for different cultures, there are many foreign loan words in the vocabulary, principally from Moluccan and Malay languages. Although it is not spoken by as many people as other national languages, it was adopted by the

Roman Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

in the district of

and thus has become fixed in grammars and dictionaries. ''Dadu'a'' is erroneously listed in some sources as a dialect of Galoli (e.g
Glottolog
, but actually represents a transplanted population of the Atauro dialect of

Wetarese Wetarese is an Austronesian language of Wetar, an island in the south Maluku, Indonesia, and of the nearby islands Liran and Atauro, the latter island separate from the mainland of East Timor, north of Dili. Background The four identified prin ...

Alphabet

A B D E G H I K L M N O R S T U ' The ' mark represents a glottal stop, �Galoli language
Omniglot.

References

External links

* Paradisec open acces
short description of Galoli
* Paradisec open acces
Galoli texts
* Paradisec open acces
Galoli phrases
Timor–Babar languages Languages of East Timor Languages of Indonesia {{austronesian-lang-stub