Tetum language
| Tetum | |
|---|---|
| Lia-Tetun | |
| Native to | West Timor, East Timor |
|
Native speakers
|
500,000, mostly in Indonesia (2010–2011) 50,000 L2-speakers in Indonesia and East Timor |
|
Austronesian
|
|
| Dialects |
|
| Official status | |
|
Official language in
|
East Timor |
|
Recognised minority
language in |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | tetu1245 |
Distribution in East Timor of Tetum Belu (west) and Tetum Terik (southeast). The majority of Tetun speakers, who live in West Timor, are not shown.
|
|
| Tetun Prasa | |
|---|---|
| Tetun Dili | |
| Tétum Praça | |
| Native to | East Timor |
|
Native speakers
|
390,000 (2009) Widespread in East Timor as L2 |
|
Tetun-based creole
|
|
| Latin (Tetum alphabet) | |
| Official status | |
|
Official language in
|
East Timor |
| Regulated by | National Institute of Linguistics |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | tetu1246 |
Distribution of Tetum Prasa mother-tongue speakers in East Timor
|
|
Tetum /ˈtɛtʊm/, also Tetun, 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. In East Timor a creolized form, Tetun Dili, is widely spoken fluently as a second language; without previous contact, Tetum and Tetun Dili are not mutually intelligible. Besides the grammatical simplification involved in creolization, Tetun Dili has been greatly influenced by the vocabulary of Portuguese, the other official language of East Timor.
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 Portuguese colonies 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.
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