Makuv'a, also spelled Makua and also known as Lovaea (Lovaia), is a nearly extinct Austronesian language

Austronesian languages

The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...

 spoken at the northeast tip of East Timor

East Timor

The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, commonly known as East Timor , is a state in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the nearby islands of Atauro and Jaco, and Oecusse, an exclave on the northwestern side of the island, within Indonesian West Timor...

 near the town of Tutuala

Tutuala

Tutuala is a town and subdistrict in the Lautém District of East Timor. Its population at the 2004 census was 3,707....

.

Makuv'a has been heavily influenced by neighboring East Timorese Papuan languages, to the extent that it was long thought to be a Papuan language. The ethnic population was 50 in 1981, but the younger generation uses Fataluku

Fataluku language

Fataluku is a Papuan language spoken by approximately 30,000 people of Fataluku ethnicity in the eastern areas of East Timor, especially around Lospalos. It is a Papuan language, and is usually considered a Trans–New Guinea language...

as their first or second language.