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Tetum language

Encyclopedia : T : TE : TET : Tetum language

Tetum (also written as Tetun) is an Austronesian language, and one of its forms, Tetum- Praca, is one of the national languages of East Timor. This is a post-creole speech continuum - with many borrowed words from Portuguese, with which it has equal status as an official language. Malay or Indonesian, is also widely spoken.

Tetum Prasa arose as a contact language in the 16th century after colonization by Portugal. The main dialect, that of the capital Dili, is called either Tetum Dili, or Tetum Prasa (literally 'town Tetum'), while the non-creole language spoken in the countryside is called Tetum-Terik. In the areas of Indonesian West Timor adjacent to the border with East Timor a variant known as Tetun-Belu, with much less Portuguese influence, is spoken. Tetum-Belu is a 'regional language' or bahasa daerah with no official status in Indonesia.

Although Portuguese was the official language of what was then Portuguese Timor, Tetum-Prasa served as the main lingua franca. When Indonesia invaded and occupied East Timor, declaring it to be the Republic's '27th Province', the use of Portuguese was banned. However, the Catholic Church, instead of adopting Bahasa Indonesia as its liturgical language, adopted Tetum, thereby making it a focus for cultural and national identity.

Contents

Vocabulary

The Tetum name for East Timor is Timor Lorosa'e - "Timor of the rising sun", or, less poetically, "East Timor"; lorosa'e comes from loro ("sun") and "sa'e" ("to rise, to go up"). The Tetum word for "word" is liafuan, from lia ("voice") and fuan ("fruit").

Austronesian

Some words in Tetum:

Portuguese

Tetum and Portuguese
Enlarge
Tetum and Portuguese

Words derived from Portuguese:

As in Indonesian, the sound [z] of Portuguese words, originally written s or z, often changed to [ʒ] in Tetum, written j: for example meja ("table") from mesa, and kemeja ("shirt") from camisa. The Portuguese letters b and v were often exchanged, as in serbisu ("work") from the Portuguese serviço.

Malay/Indonesian

Words derived from Malay include:

Numerals

However, Tetum speakers often use Malay/Indonesian or Portuguese numbers instead, such as delapan or oito ("eight") instead of ualu; especially for numbers over one thousand.

Grammar

Grammar in Tetum is comparatively simple. There are no genders or verb conjugations. There is no definite article, so fetu can be transtaled as "woman" or "the woman", depending on the context. There is no verb "to be" as such, although the word la'ós (which translates as "not to be") is used to express the negative:

Similarly, maka (which roughly translates as "who is" or "what is") can be used with an adjective for emphasis:

The interrogative is formed by using the word ka ("or") or ka lae ("or not").

The plural is not normally used for nouns, although the word sira ("they") can be used for emphasis.

In the case of words of Portuguese origin, the distinct plural (ending with the letter s) is used;

To turn an adjective into a noun, the word oan is added:

Similarly, "Timorese" is Timor-oan, as opposed to the country of Timor, Rai-Timor.

The past tense is not usually used except for emphasis, when the word ona ("already") is added at the end of the sentence.

Like Malay, Tetum has two forms of "we": ami (equivalent to Malay "kami") which is exclusive (eg: "just you and me"), and ita (equivalent to Malay "kita"), which is inclusive (eg: "you, me, and them").

The word "nia" is used as the possessive.

The genitive is formed by using "nian", hence:

Basic phrases

Tetum and Portuguese
Enlarge
Tetum and Portuguese

Orthography

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 (INL). However, there are still widespread variations in spelling.

The current orthography originates from the spelling reforms unertaken by Fretilin in 1974, when it launched literacy campaigns across East Timor during that year, and also from the system used by the Catholic Church when it adopted Tetum as the liturgical language during the Indonesian occupation. These involved the transliteration of many Portuguese words that were formerly written in the original spelling, for example, educação ("education") → edukasaun, and colonialismo ("colonialism") → kolonializmu.

More recent reforms by the INL include the replacement of the digraphs nh and lh (borowed from Portuguese and pronounced [ɳ] "ny" and [ʎ] "ly") by ñ and ll, respectively (as in Spanish and Galician). Thus, Portuguese senhor ("mister") became señór in Tetum, and trabalhador ("worker", "hard-working") became traballadór.

Some linguists favoured ny (used by Catalan) and ly for these sounds, but these spellings were rejected as being similar to the Indonesian system. The letter ñ was also used in Filipino, but this was recently replaced by ny.

In fact, the Tetum pronunciations of these letter combinations are closer to [yl] and [yn], hence señor is prounced as [sey'nor] in Tetum, and trabalhador as [trabayla'dor].

The sound [ʃ], written ch or x in Portuguese, is written x in Tetum (as in Galician and in the Konkani language of Goa), as in xá ("tea"), from Portuguese chá.

The sounds of j and z are often confused, so that the Portuguese-derived word exemplu or "example" may be pronounced in Tetum as [eʒemplu], and, conversely, Janeiru or "January" as [zaneiru].

Name of the language

The spelling of the name of the language as Tetum is a reflection of Portuguese pronunciation, in which 'm' is pronounced as a nasal sound, rather than that in the language itself. Consequently, some people regard Tetun as more appropriate. Although favoured by Indonesian speakers, Tetun has also been used by Portuguese speakers such as José Ramos Horta and Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, in Portuguese as well as English.

Similar disagreements over nomenclature have emerged in other indigenous languages, such as (Swahili/Kiswahili) and (Punjabi/Panjabi).

Dialects

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 is more Portuguese-influenced, as many of those speakers were not educated in Indonesian.

See also

External links

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