, nativename=''Tetun Dili, Tetun Prasa''
, states=
East Timor
, speakers=
, date=2009
, ref=
, speakers2 =
L2: in East Timor
, familycolor=Austronesian
, fam2=
Malayo-Polynesian
, fam3=
Central–Eastern
, fam4=
Timoric
, fam5=
Oceanic
, fam6=Tetumic
, dia1=Belunese (''Tetun Belu'')
, dia2=Terik (''Tetun Terik'')
, script=
Latin (
Tetum alphabet The Tetum alphabet is used to write Tetum. It is based on the Latin alphabet and contains 24 letters:
The accented letters '' á'', '' é'', '' í'', '' ó'', and '' ú'' are also used.
The letter ''W'' only occurs in some words of dialectal or ...
)
, nation=
East Timor
, agency=National Institute of Linguistics
, iso3=tdt
, glotto2=tetu1246
, glottorefname2=Tetun Dili
, map=Tetum Prasa.png
, mapcaption=Distribution of Tetum Prasa mother-tongue speakers in East Timor
, notice=IPA
Tetum ( ; id, Bahasa Tetun; pt, Tétum ) is an
Austronesian language spoken on the island of
Timor. It is spoken in
Belu Regency in
Indonesian
West Timor, and across the border in
East Timor, where it is one of the two
official languages.
There are two main forms of Tetum as a language:
* Tetum Terik, which is a more indigenous form of Tetum marked by different word choice, less foreign influence and other characteristics such as verb conjugation
* Tetum/n Prasa ('market Tetum', from the Portuguese word meaning 'town square') or Tetum/n 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 ''Tetun Dili'' is widely spoken fluently as a second language.
Without previous contact, ''Tetum Terik'' and ''Tetun Dili'' are not immediately mutually intelligible, mainly because of the large number of Portuguese origin words used in Tetun Dili.
Besides some grammatical simplification, Tetun Dili has been greatly influenced by the vocabulary and to a small extent by the grammar of
Portuguese, the other official language of East Timor.
Nomenclature
The English form ''Tetum'' is derived from Portuguese, rather than from modern Tetum. Consequently, some people regard ''Tetun'' as more appropriate. Although this coincides with the favoured Indonesian form, and the variant with ''m'' has a longer history in English, ''Tetun'' has also been used by some Portuguese-educated Timorese, such as
José Ramos-Horta and
Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo.
Similar disagreements over nomenclature have emerged regarding the names of other languages, such as
Swahili/Kiswahili and
Punjabi/Panjabi.
History and dialects

According to linguist Geoffrey Hull, Tetum has four dialects:
*''Tetun-Dili'', or ''Tetun-Prasa'' (literally 'city Tetum'), is spoken in the capital,
Dili
Dili (Portuguese/Tetum: ''Díli'') is the capital, largest city of East Timor and the second largest city in Timor islands after Kupang (Indonesia). It lies on the northern coast of the island of Timor, in a small area of flat land hemmed in ...
, 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-based
creole. 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. According to ''Ethnologue'', there were 50,000 Tetun-Dili speakers in East Timor in 2004.
*''Tetun-Terik'' is spoken in the south and southwestern coastal regions. According to ''Ethnologue'', there were 50,000 Tetun-Terik speakers in East Timor in 1995.
*''Tetun-Belu'', or the Belunese dialect, is spoken in a central strip of the island of Timor from the
Ombai Strait to the
Timor Sea, and is split between
East Timor and
West Timor, where it is considered a or 'regional language', with no official status in
Indonesia, although it is used by the
Diocese of
Atambua
Atambua is the regency seat of Belu Regency, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia.
The town stretches as far as 8.5 km from north to south and 5 km from east to west, and is located in the north of the western half of Timor Island. The town is ...
in Roman Catholic rites.
*The ''Nana'ek'' dialect is spoken in the village of
Metinaro
Metinaro is a town in Metinaro Subdistrict, Dili District, East Timor. The coast has a wonderful diving area with a colourful world of animals.
Metinaro is also the home of the East Timor's 1st Battalion F-FDTL ( Forças de Defesa de Tim ...
, on the coastal road between Dili and
Manatuto.
''Tetun-Belu'' and ''Tetun-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 of
Portuguese Timor until 1975, ''Tetun-Prasa'' has always been the predominant ''
lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
'' 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
Oecusse (also variously ''Oecussi'', ''Ocussi'', ''Oekussi'', ''Oekusi'', ''Okusi'', ''Oé-Cusse''), also known as Oecusse-Ambeno (; ) and formerly just Ambeno, officially the Special Administrative Region Oecusse-Ambeno (), is an exclave, Mun ...
) 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 the
lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
: 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
This is a list of Portuguese monarchs who ruled from the establishment of the Kingdom of Portugal, in 1139, to the deposition of the Portuguese monarchy and creation of the Portuguese Republic with the 5 October 1910 revolution.
Through the n ...
.
When
Indonesia occupied East Timor between 1975 and 1999, declaring it "the Republic's 27th Province", the use of Portuguese was banned, and
Indonesian
Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to:
* Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia
** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago
** Indonesian ...
was declared the sole official language, but the
Roman Catholic Church adopted Tetum as its liturgical language, making it a focus for cultural and national identity. After the
United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) took over governance in September 1999, Tetun (Dili) was proclaimed the country's official language, even though according to ''
Encarta Winkler 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. When East Timor gained its independence on 20 May 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.
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
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
is more Portuguese-influenced, as many of those speakers were not educated in Indonesian.
Vocabulary
Indigenous
The Tetum name for East Timor is , which means 'Timor of the rising sun', or, less poetically, 'East Timor'; comes from 'sun' and 'to rise, to go up'. The noun for 'word' is , from 'voice' and 'fruit'. Some more words in Tetum:
* – 'high'
* – 'bad'
* – 'tree'
* – 'fruit'
* – 'spice'
* – 'water'
* – 'friend'
* – 'big'
* – 'good'
* – 'love'
* – 'person, people'
* – 'place'
* – 'woman'
* – 'mountain'
* – 'moon/month'
* – 'war'
* – 'hungry'
* – 'eat'
* – 'food'
* – 'drink'
* – 'all'
* – 'one'
* – 'night'
* – 'little'
* – 'low'
* – 'child'
* – 'crocodile'
* – 'fast'
* – 'mirror'
* – 'inside'
* – 'language'
* – 'word' (from 'voice' and 'fruit')
* – 'voice', 'language'
* – 'true'
* – 'day'
* – 'afternoon'
* – 'sacred'
* – 'man'
* – 'god'
* – 'life'
* – 'country'
* – 'sea'
* – 'year'
* – 'very'
* – 'dirt'
* – 'hard'
* – 'first'
* – 'head'
From Portuguese
Words derived from Portuguese:
* – 'goodbye'
* – 'help'
* – 'learn', from
* – 'too much'
* – 'decision', from
* – 'education', from
* 'instead of', from
* – 'so', 'well', from
* – 'school', from
* – 'government', from
* – 'church'
* – 'history', from
* – 'generation', from
* – 'cheese', from
* – 'understand', from
* – 'less', from
* – 'thanks', from
* – 'bread', from
* – 'people', from
* – 'teacher', from
* – 'religion', from
* – 'week'
* – 'work', from
* – 'beer', from
* – 'must', from
* – 'chief', from
* – 'idea'
* – 'music', from
* – 'experience', from
* – 'technology', from
* – 'force', from
* – 'electricity', from
* – 'terrorism', from
* – 'embassy'
* – 'organization', from
* – 'architecture', from
* – 'coffee', from
* – 'equipment', from
* – 'president', from
* – 'pillowcases', from
* – 'airplane', from
* – 'company', from
* – 'television', from
* – 'engineering', from
* – 'corruption', from
* – 'police', from
* – 'physics', from
* – 'profession', from
* – 'impossible', from
* – 'guitarist', from
* – 'passport', from
* – 'message', from
* – 'Christmas', from
From Malay
As a result of
Bazaar Malay being a regional lingua franca and of
Indonesian
Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to:
* Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia
** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago
** Indonesian ...
being a working language, many words are derived from
Malay
Malay may refer to:
Languages
* Malay language or Bahasa Melayu, a major Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore
** History of the Malay language, the Malay language from the 4th to the 14th century
** Indonesi ...
, including:
* 'hundred', from
* 'much', from
* 'can', from
* 'iron', from
* 'rain', from
* 'way' or 'road', from
* 'stone', from
* 'moon' or 'month' from
* 'foreigner', from 'Malay'
* 'hot', from
* 'thousand', from
* 'wrong', from
* 'help', from
* 'kitchen', from
* 'house', from
In addition, as a legacy of
Indonesian rule, other words of Malay origin have entered Tetum, through
Indonesian
Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to:
* Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia
** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago
** Indonesian ...
.
Numerals
* 'one'
* 'two'
* 'three'
* 'four'
* 'five'
* 'six'
* 'seven'
* 'eight'
* 'nine'
* 'ten'
* 'twenty'
However, Tetum speakers often use
Malay/Indonesian or
Portuguese numbers instead, such as or 'eight' instead of , especially for numbers over one thousand.
Combinations
Tetum has many hybrid words, which are
combinations of indigenous and Portuguese words. These often include an indigenous Tetum verb, with a Portuguese suffix ''-dór'' (similar to '-er'). For example:
* ('to eat') – glutton
* ('to drink') – heavy drinker
* ('to say') – chatterbox, talkative person
* ('to nag, pester') – nag, pest
Basic phrases
* – 'Good morning' (from Portuguese ).
* – 'How are you?' (literally 'Are you well or not?')
* – 'I'm fine.'
* – 'Thank you', said by a male/female (from Portuguese ).
* – 'Do you speak Tetum?'
* – 'Right'
* – 'No.'
* [] – 'I [do not] understand' (from Portuguese ).
Grammar
Morphology
Personal pronouns
A common occurrence is to use titles such as for a woman or names rather than pronouns when addressing people.
The second person singular pronoun is used generally with children, friends or family, while with strangers or people of higher social status, or is used.
Nouns and pronouns
= Plural
=
The plural is not normally marked on nouns, but the word 'they' can express it when necessary.
: 'woman/women' → 'women'
However, the plural ending ''-s'' of nouns of Portuguese origin is sometimes retained.
: – United States (from )
: – United Nations (from )
= Definiteness
=
Tetum has an optional indefinite
article
Article often refers to:
* Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness
* Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication
Article may also refer to:
G ...
('one'), used after nouns:
: – a child
There is no definite article, but the
demonstrative
Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
s ('this one') and ('that one') may be used to express definiteness:
: – this child, the child
: – that child, the child
In the plural, ('these') or ('those') are used:
: – these children, the children
: – those children, the children
= Possessive/genitive
=
The particle forms the inalienable possessive, and can be used in a similar way to s'' in English, e.g.:
: – 'João's house'
: – 'Cristina's book'
When the possessor is postposed, representing alienable possession, becomes :
: – the people of East Timor
= Inclusive and exclusive ''we''
=
Like other Austronesian languages, Tetum has two forms of ''we'', (equivalent to Malay ) which is exclusive, e.g. "I and they", and (equivalent to Malay ), which is
inclusive, e.g. "you, I, and they".
: – 'our
amily'scar'
: – 'our country'
= Nominalization
=
Nouns derived from verbs or adjectives are usually formed with
affix
In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ar ...
es, for example the
suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...
''-na'in'', similar to "-er" in English.
: 'write' → 'writer'
The suffix ''-na'in'' can also be used with nouns, in the sense of 'owner'.
: 'house' → 'householder'
In more traditional forms of Tetum, the
circumfix
A circumfix (abbreviated ) (also confix or ambifix) is an affix which has two parts, one placed at the start of a word, and the other at the end. Circumfixes contrast with prefixes, attached to the beginnings of words; suffixes, attached at t ...
''ma(k)- -k'' is used instead of ''-na'in''. For example, the nouns 'sinner' or 'wrongdoer' can be derived from the word as either , or . Only the
prefix
A prefix is an affix which is placed before the Word stem, stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy'' ...
''ma(k)-'' is used when the root word ends with a consonant; for example, the noun 'cook' or 'chef' can be derived from the word as as well as .
The suffix ''-teen'' (from the word for 'dirt' or 'excrement') can be used with adjectives to form derogatory terms:
: 'false' → 'liar'
Adjectives
= Derivation from nouns
=
To turn a noun into a nominalised adjective, the word ('person, child, associated object') is added to it.
: 'foreigner' → 'foreign'
Thus, 'Timorese person' is , as opposed to the country of Timor, .
To form adjectives and actor nouns from verbs, the suffix ''-dór'' (derived from Portuguese) can be added:
: 'tell' → 'talkative'
= Gender
=
Tetum does not have separate masculine and feminine gender, hence (similar to // in Malay) can mean either 'he', 'she' or 'it'.
Different forms for the genders only occur in Portuguese-derived adjectives, hence ('thank you') is used by men, and 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.
: – 'democratic government' (from , masculine)
: – 'democratic nation' (from , feminine)
In some instances, the different gender forms have distinct translations into English:
: – 'handsome'
: – 'pretty'
In indigenous Tetum words, the suffixes ('male') and ('female') are sometimes used to differentiate between the genders:
: 'son' → 'daughter'
= Comparatives and superlatives
=
Superlatives can be formed from adjectives by
reduplication
In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change.
The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edwa ...
:
: 'much, many' → 'very much, many'
: 'big, great' → 'huge, enormous'
: 'good' → 'very good'
: 'last' → 'the very last, final'
: 'clean, clear' → 'spotless, immaculate'
When making comparisons, the word ('more') is used after the adjective, optionally followed by ('than' from Portuguese ):
: — Maria is older than Ana.
To describe something as the most or least, the word ('all') is added:
: — Maria is the oldest.
Adverbs
Adverbs can be formed from adjectives or nouns by reduplication:
: 'good' → 'well'
: 'new, recent' → 'newly, recently'
: 'night' → 'nightly'
: 'quick' → 'quickly'
: 'day' → 'daily'
Prepositions and circumpositions
The most commonly used
preposition
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
s in Tetum are the verbs ('have', 'possess', 'specific locative') and ('go', 'to', 'for'). Most prepostional concepts of English are expressed by nominal phrases formed by using , the object and the position (expressed by a noun),optionally with the possessive .
: — '
inside the house'
: — '
on top of the mountain'
: — '
on the table'
: — '
under the chair'
: — '
outside the country'
: — '
between the people'
Verbs
= Copula and negation
=
There is no
verb ''to be'' as such, but the word , which translates as 'not to be', is used for negation:
: — 'The Timorese are not Indonesians.'
The word , which roughly translates as 'who is' or 'what is', can be used with an adjective for emphasis:
: — 'It's John who likes beer.'
= Interrogation
=
The
interrogative
An interrogative clause is a clause whose form is typically associated with question-like meanings. For instance, the English sentence "Is Hannah sick?" has interrogative syntax which distinguishes it from its declarative counterpart "Hannah is ...
is formed by using the words ('or') or ('or not').
: — 'Are you crazy?'
: — 'Do you like me?'
= Derivation from nouns and adjectives
=
Transitive verbs are formed by adding the prefix ''ha-'' or ''hak-'' to a noun or adjective:
: 'liquid' → 'to liquify, to melt'
: 'mad' → 'to drive mad'
: 'union' → 'to unite'
: 'shade' → 'to shade, to cover'
: 'hot' → 'to heat up'
Intransitive verbs are formed by adding the prefix ''na-'' or ''nak-'' to a noun or adjective:
: — '(to be) liquified, melted'
: — '(to be) driven mad'
: — '(to be) united'
: — '(to be) shaded, covered'
: — '(to become) heated up'
= Conjugations and inflections (in Tetun-Terik)
=
In , verbs inflect when they begin with a vowel or consonant h. In this case
mutation of the first consonant occurs. For example, the verb ('to see') in would be
conjugated as follows:
: — 'I see'
: — 'you (sing.) see'
: — 'he/she/it sees'
: — 'we see'
: — 'you (pl.) see'
: — 'they see'
Tenses
Past
Whenever possible, the past tense is simply inferred from the context, for example:
: – 'Yesterday I ate rice.'
However, it can be expressed by placing the adverb ('already') at the end of a sentence.
: – 'I've (already) eaten rice.'
When is used with ('not') this means 'no more' or 'no longer', rather than 'have not':
: – 'I don't eat rice anymore.'
In order to convey that an action has not occurred, the word ('not yet') is used:
: – 'I haven't eaten rice (yet).'
When relating an action that occurred in the past, the word ('finally' or 'well and truly') is used with the verb.
: – 'I ate rice.'
Future
The
future tense
In grammar, a future tense (abbreviated ) is a verb form that generally marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future. An example of a future tense form is the French ''aimera'', meaning ...
is formed by placing the word ('will') before a verb:
: – 'I ''will'' give them food.'
The negative is formed by adding ('not') between and the verb:
: – 'I ''will not'' give them food.'
Aspects
Perfect
The perfect
aspect can be formed by using .
: – 'I have eaten rice / I ate rice.'
When negated, indicates that an action ceased to occur:
: – 'I didn't eat rice anymore.'
In order to convey that a past action had not or never occurred, the word ('not yet' or 'never') is used:
: – 'I didn't eat rice / I hadn't eaten rice.'
Progressive
The
progressive aspect can be obtained by placing the word ('stay') after a verb:
: – 'They're (still) working.'
Imperative
The
imperative mood is formed using the word ('go') at the end of a sentence, hence:
: – 'Read the letter!'
The word ('just' or 'a bit') may also be used when making a request rather than a command:
: – 'Just read the letter.'
When forbidding an action ('cannot') or ('do not') are used:
: – 'Don't smoke here!'
: – 'Don't kill them!'
Orthography and phonology
The influence of Portuguese and to a lesser extent Malay/Indonesian on the phonology of Tetun has been extensive.
In the Tetum language, , and tend to have relatively fixed sounds. However and vary according to the environment they are placed in, for instance the sound is slightly higher if the proceeding syllable is or .
All consonants appearing in parenthesis 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:
is an unstable voiced labio-dental fricative and tends to alternate with or is replaced by ; e.g. – meaning 'grandparent.'
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
National Institute of Linguistics
National may refer to:
Common uses
* Nation or country
** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen
Places in the United States
* National, Maryland, ce ...
(INL). The standard orthography devised by the institute was declared official by Government Decree 1/2004 of 14 April 2004.
However, there are still widespread variations in spelling, one example being the word or 'when', which has also been written as , , , . The use of or is a reflection of the pronunciation in some rural dialects of ''Tetun-Terik''.
The current orthography originates from the spelling reforms undertaken 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
Transcription refers to the process of converting sounds (voice, music etc.) into letters or musical notes, or producing a copy of something in another medium, including:
Genetics
* Transcription (biology), the copying of DNA into RNA, the fir ...
of many Portuguese words that were formerly written in their original spelling, for example, → 'education', and → 'colonialism'.
Reforms suggested by the International Committee for the Development of East Timorese Languages (IACDETL) in 1996 included the replacement of the
digraphs and
(borrowed from Portuguese, where they stand for the phonemes and ) by and , respectively (as in certain
Basque orthographies), to avoid confusion with the
consonant clusters and , which also occur in Tetum. Thus, 'sir' became , and 'worker' became . Later, as adopted by IACDETL and approved by the INL in 2002, and were replaced by
and
(as in
Spanish). Thus, 'sir' became , and 'worker' became . Some linguists favoured using
(as in
Catalan
Catalan may refer to:
Catalonia
From, or related to Catalonia:
* Catalan language, a Romance language
* Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia
Places
* 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
and
Filipino) and
for these sounds, but the latter spellings were rejected for being similar to the Indonesian system, and most speakers actually pronounce ''ñ'' and ''ll'' as and , respectively, with a
semivowel which forms a
diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
with the preceding vowel (but reduced to , after ), not as the
palatal consonants of Portuguese and Spanish. Thus, , are pronounced , , and , are pronounced , . As a result, some writers use and instead, for example and for June and July ( and 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 the
apostrophe
The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes:
* The marking of the omission of one o ...
for the
glottal stop
The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...
, for example → 'large' and → 'small'.
The sound , which is not indigenous to Tetum but appears in many loanwords from Portuguese and Malay, often changed to in old Tetum and to (written ) in the speech of young speakers: for example, 'table' from Portuguese , and 'shirt' from Portuguese . In the sociolect of Tetum that is still used by the generation educated during the Indonesian occupation, and may occur in
free variation
In linguistics, free variation is the phenomenon of two (or more) sounds or forms appearing in the same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by native speakers.
Sociolinguists argue that describing such v ...
. For instance, the Portuguese-derived word 'example' is pronounced by some speakers, and conversely 'January' is pronounced . The sound , also not native to the language, often shifted to , as in 'work' from Portuguese (also note that a modern INL convention promotes the use of for 'work' and for 'service').
See also
*
Languages of East Timor
The languages of East Timor include both Austronesian and Papuan languages. (See Timor–Flores languages and Timor–Alor–Pantar languages.) The lingua franca and national language of East Timor is Tetum, an Austronesian language influenced ...
*
The Lord's Prayer in Tetum at
Wikisource
References
National Institute of Linguistics, National University of East Timor (Archived)includes several bilingual Tetum dictionaries, and articles about Tetum
*Hull, Geoffrey, ''Standard Tetum-English Dictionary'' 2nd Ed, Allen & Unwin Publishers
*
ttps://web.archive.org/web/20070927042437/http://www.asianlang.mq.edu.au/INL/orthhist.pdf The standard orthography of the Tetum language(PDF)
Matadalan Ortografiku ba Lia-Tetun- Tetum Spelling Guide
Damien LEIRIS - Personal approach of the Tetum language(PDF)
*
ttps://web.archive.org/web/20080119191225/http://www.asianlang.mq.edu.au/INL/speech1.html Current Language Issues in East Timor (Dr. Geoffrey Hull)*
*
*
External links
*Peace Corps East Timor Tetun Language Manual
2011, 2nd edition2015, 3rd edition*
Pictures from a Portuguese language course, using Tetum, published in the East Timorese newspaper
Lia Foun in Díli (from
Wikimedia Commons)
Tetunwebsite with sound files
an interview with some information on the history of Tetum
and other publications available from Dili
Damien LEIRIS - Personal approach of the Tetum language(PDF)
Tetun dictionaryTetum illustrated dictionaryDili Institute of TechnologyInstitute of Technology website
includes some information on grammar, based on the ''Tetun-Terik'' dialect
*
ttp://www.suara-timor-lorosae.com/ ''Suara Timor Lorosae'' Daily newspaper in Tetum and Indonesianbr>
''Jornal Nacional Semanário'' Tetum pageTetun writing courses for East Timorese university students, by Catharina Williams-van Klinken, Dili Institute of Technology
Talk Tetum in TimorVisitEastTimor.com Travel Guide help you to talk in East Timor
*
Robert Blust's
field notes on Tetun are archived with
Kaipuleohone
*
{{Languages of Indonesia
Languages of East Timor
Languages of Indonesia
Timor–Babar languages
Subject–verb–object languages