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Tetum (Tetun ; ; ) is an Austronesian language spoken on the island of Timor. It is one of the official languages of East Timor and it is also spoken in Belu Regency and Malaka Regency, which form the eastern part of West Timor adjoining Timor-Leste.
There are two main forms of Tetum as a language:
Ethnologue classifies Tetun Terik as a dialect of Tetun. However, without previous contact, Tetun Dili is 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.
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 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 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 Atoni was spoken, and it was not until 1769, when the capital was moved from Lifau (Oecusse District) 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.
Following the Carnation Revolution in Portugal in 1974, Indonesia invaded East Timor, declaring it "the Republic's 27th Province". The use of Portuguese was banned, and 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. "Tetum and Other Languages of East Timor", from Dr. Geoffrey Hull's Preface to Mai Kolia Tetun: A Course in Tetum-Praca (The Lingua Franca of East Timor) After the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) took over governance in 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.Encarta-encyclopedie Winkler Prins (1993–2002) s.v. "Oost-Timor. §1.5 Onafhankelijkheid". Microsoft Corporation/Het Spectrum. When East Timor gained its independence in 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 living in Portugal and Australia are more Portuguese-influenced, as many of those speakers were not educated in Indonesian.
In addition, as a legacy of Indonesian rule, other words of Malay origin have entered Tetum, through Indonesian.
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.
A common occurrence is to use titles such as Senhora for a woman or names rather than pronouns when addressing people.
The second person singular pronoun Ó is used generally with children, friends or family, while with strangers or people of higher social status, Ita or Ita boot is used.
However, the plural ending -s of nouns of Portuguese origin is sometimes retained.
There is no definite article, but the ida-ne'e ('this one') and ida-ne'ebá ('that one') may be used to express definiteness:
In the plural, sira-ne'e ('these') or sira-ne'ebá ('those') are used:
When the possessor is postposed, representing alienable possession, nia becomes nian:
The suffix -na'in can also be used with nouns, in the sense of 'owner'.
The suffix -teen (from the word for 'dirt' or 'excrement') can be used with adjectives to form derogatory terms:
Thus, 'Timorese person' is Timor-oan, as opposed to the country of Timor, rai-Timor.
To form adjectives and actor nouns from verbs, the suffix -dór (derived from Portuguese) can be added:
Different forms for the genders only occur in Portuguese-derived adjectives, hence obrigadu ('thank you') is used by men, and obrigada 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.
In some instances, the different gender forms have distinct translations into English:
In indigenous Tetum words, the suffixes -mane ('male') and -feto ('female') are sometimes used to differentiate between the genders:
When making comparisons, the word liu ('more') is used after the adjective, optionally followed by duké ('than' from Portuguese do que):
To describe something as the most or least, the word hotu ('all') is added:
The word maka, which roughly translates as 'who is' or 'what is', can be used with fronted phrases for focusing/ emphasis:
Intransitive verbs are formed by adding the prefix na- or nak- to a noun or adjective:
However, it can be expressed by placing the adverb ona ('already') at the end of a sentence.
When ona is used with la ('not') this means 'no more' or 'no longer', rather than 'have not':
In order to convey that an action has not occurred, the word seidauk ('not yet') is used:
When relating an action that occurred in the past, the word tiha ('finally' or 'well and truly') is used with the verb.
The negative is formed by adding la ('not') between sei and the verb:
When negated, tiha ona indicates that an action ceased to occur:
In order to convey that a past action had not or never occurred, the word ladauk ('not yet' or 'never') is used:
The word lai ('just' or 'a bit') may also be used when making a request rather than a command:
When forbidding an action labele ('cannot') or keta ('do not') are used:
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 .Hull, Geoffrey. (1999). Tetum, Language Manual for East Timor. Academy of East Timor Studies, Faculty of Education & Languages, University of Western Sydney Macathur.
All consonants appearing in parentheses 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:
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 (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 bainhira or 'when', which has also been written as bain-hira, wainhira, waihira, uaihira. 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 of many Portuguese words that were formerly written in their original spelling, for example, educação → edukasaun 'education', and colonialismo → kolonializmu '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 ) with and , respectively (as in certain Basque language orthographies), to avoid confusion with the consonant clusters and , which also occur in Tetum. Thus, senhor 'sir' became sen̄ór, and trabalhador 'worker' became trabal̄adór. Later, as adopted by IACDETL and approved by the INL in 2002, and were replaced by ñ}} and ll}} (as in Spanish language). Thus, sen̄ór 'sir' became señór, and trabal̄adór 'worker' became traballadór. Some linguists favoured using (as in Catalan language 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 with the preceding vowel (but reduced to , after ), not as the palatal consonants of Portuguese and Spanish. Thus, señór, traballadór are pronounced , , and liña, kartilla are pronounced , . As a result, some writers use and instead, for example Juinu and Juilu for June and July (Junho and Julho 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 for the glottal stop, for example boot → bot 'large' and ki'ik → kiik '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, meja 'table' from Portuguese mesa, and kamija 'shirt' from Portuguese camisa. In the sociolect of Tetum that is still used by the generation educated during the Indonesian occupation, and may occur in free variation. For instance, the Portuguese-derived word ezemplu 'example' is pronounced by some speakers, and conversely Janeiru 'January' is pronounced . The sound , also not native to the language, often shifted to , as in serbisu 'work' from Portuguese serviço (also note that a modern INL convention promotes the use of serbisu for 'work' and servisu for 'service').
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.
History and dialects
According to linguist Geoffrey Hull, Tetum has four dialects:
Vocabulary
Indigenous
The Tetum name for East Timor is Timór Lorosa'e, which means '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 noun for 'word' is liafuan, from lia 'voice' and fuan 'fruit'. Some more words in Tetum:
From Portuguese
Words derived from Portuguese:
From Malay
As a result of Bazaar Malay being a regional lingua franca and of Indonesian being a working language, many words are derived from Malay language, including:
Numerals
Combinations
Tetum has many hybrid words, which are Combining form of indigenous and Portuguese words. These often include an indigenous Tetum verb, with a Portuguese suffix -dór (similar to '-er'). For example:
Basic phrases
Grammar
Morphology
Personal pronouns
(2025). 9780858835092, Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University. . ISBN 9780858835092
Nouns and pronouns
Plural
The plural is not normally marked on nouns, but the word sira 'they' can express it when necessary.
Definiteness
Tetum has an optional indefinite article ida ('one'), used after nouns:
Possessive/genitive
The particle nia forms the inalienable possessive, and can be used in a similar way to 's in English, e.g.:
Inclusive and exclusive we
Like other Austronesian languages, Tetum has two forms of we, ami (equivalent to Malay kami) which is exclusive, e.g. "I and they", and ita (equivalent to Malay kita), which is Clusivity, e.g. "you, I, and they".
Nominalization
Nouns derived from verbs or adjectives are usually formed with , for example the suffix -na'in, similar to "-er" in English.
In more traditional forms of Tetum, the circumfix ma(k)- -k is used instead of -na'in. For example, the nouns 'sinner' or 'wrongdoer' can be derived from the word sala as either maksalak, or sala-na'in. Only the prefix 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 te'in as makte'in as well as te'in-na'in.
Adjectives
Derivation from nouns
To turn a noun into a nominalised adjective, the word oan ('person, child, associated object') is added to it.
Gender
Tetum does not have separate masculine and feminine gender, hence nia (similar to ia/dia/nya in Malay) can mean either 'he', 'she' or 'it'.
Comparatives and superlatives
Superlatives can be formed from adjectives by reduplication:
Adverbs
Adverbs can be formed from adjectives or nouns by reduplication:
Prepositions and circumpositions
The most commonly used in Tetum are the verbs iha ('have', 'possess', 'specific locative') and baa/ba ('go', 'to', 'for'). Most prepostional concepts of English are expressed by nominal phrases formed by using iha, the object and the position (expressed by a noun),optionally with the possessive nia.
Verbs
Copula and negation
There is no verb to be as such, but the word la'ós, which translates as 'not to be', is used for negation:
Interrogation
The interrogative is formed by using the words ka ('or') or ka lae ('or not').
Derivation from nouns and adjectives
are formed by adding the prefix ha- or hak- to a noun or adjective:
Conjugations and (in Tetun-Terik)
In Tetun-Terik, verbs inflect when they begin with a vowel or consonant h. In this case mutation of the first consonant occurs. For example, the verb haree ('see') in Tetun-Terik would be conjugated as follows:
Tenses
Past
Whenever possible, the past tense is simply inferred from the context, for example:
Future
The future tense is formed by placing the word sei ('will') before a verb:
Aspects
Perfect
The perfect aspect can be formed by using tiha ona.
Progressive
The progressive aspect can be obtained by placing the word hela ('stay') after a verb:
Imperative
The imperative mood is formed using the word ba ('go') at the end of a sentence, hence:
Orthography and phonology
The influence of Portuguese and to a lesser extent Malay/Indonesian on the phonology of Tetun has been extensive.
+Tetum Vowels +Tetum consonants
!
!colspan=2 Labial consonant
!colspan=2 Alveolar
!colspan=2 Palatal
!colspan=2 Velar consonant
!colspan=2 Glottal is an unstable voiced labio-dental fricative and tends to alternate with or is replaced by ; e.g. – meaning 'grandparent.'
See also
Catharina Van Klinken (1999). 9780858835146, Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University. . ISBN 9780858835146
External links
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