Tetum language
Encyclopedia
Tetum is an Austronesian language
, a national language
and one of the two official language
s of East Timor
. It is also used in parts of West Timor
that adjoin East Timor, particularly in Belu Regency
. Some of its dialects have been greatly influenced by Portuguese
, the other official language of the country, especially in their vocabulary
, but also in aspects of their grammar
.
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.
When Indonesia occupied East Timor in 1975, 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. When East Timor gained its independence in 2002, Tetum and Portuguese were declared as official languages.
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.
Words derived from Indonesian
include:
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.
hemu ("to drink") hemudór – heavy drinker.
hateten ("to say") hatetendór – chatterbox, talkative person.
sisi ("to nag, pester") sisidór – nag, pest.
The plural is not normally marked on nouns, but the word sira "they" can express it when necessary.
However, the plural ending -(e)s of nouns of Portuguese origin is retained.
Tetum has an indefinite article
ida ("one"), used after nouns:
There is no definite article, but the demonstrative
s 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:
The particle nia forms the possessive
, and can be used in a similar way to the Saxon genitive
in English, e.g.:
The genitive
is formed with nian, so that:
Like other Austronesian languages, Tetum has two forms of "we", ami (equivalent to Indonesian and Malay kami) which is exclusive, e.g. "I and they", and ita (equivalent to Indonesian and Malay kita), which is inclusive
, e.g. "you, I, and they".
Nouns derived from verbs or adjectives are usually formed with affix
es, 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.
The suffix -teen (from the word for "dirt" or "excrement") can be used with adjectives to form derogatory terms:
To turn a noun into an adjective, the particle
oan is added to it.
Thus, "Timorese" is Timor-oan, as opposed to the country of Timor, rai-Timor.
To form adjectives from verbs, the suffix -dór (derived from Portuguese) can be added:
Tetum does not have separate masculine and feminine forms of the third person singular, hence nia (similar to dia in Indonesian and Malay) can mean either "he", "she" or "it".
Different forms for the genders only occur in Portuguese-derived adjectives, hence obrigadu ("thank you") is used by males, and obrigada by females. 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:
Superlatives can be formed from adjectives by reduplication
:
When making comparisons, the word liu ("more") is used after the adjective, followed by duké ("than" from Portuguese do que):
To describe something as the most or least, the word hotu ("all") is added:
There is no verb "to be" as such, but the word la'ós, which translates as "not to be", is used for negation:
The word 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 words ka ("or") or ka lae ("or not").
Transitive verb
s are formed by adding the prefix ha- or hak- to a noun or adjective:
Intransitive verb
s are formed by adding the prefix na- or nak- to a noun or adjective:
In Tetun-Terik mutation
of verbs occurs, resulting in different forms depending on the pronoun. For example, the verb haree (to see) in Tetun-Terik would be conjugated
as follows:
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.
is formed by placing the word sei ("will") before a verb:
The negative is formed by adding la ("not") between sei and the verb:
can be formed by using tiha ona.
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:
can be obtained by placing the word hela ("stay") after a verb:
is formed using the word ba ("go") at the end of a sentence, hence:
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:
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".
More recent reforms by the INL include the replacement of the digraphs
"nh
" and "lh" (borrowed from Portuguese, where they stand for the phonemes /ɲ/ and /ʎ/) by "ñ
" and "ll
", respectively (as in Spanish
), to avoid confusion with the consonant cluster
s /nh/ and /lh/, which also occur in Tetum. Thus, senhor "sir" became señór, and trabalhador "worker" became traballadór. Some linguists favoured using "ny" (as in Catalan
and Filipino
) and "ly" for these sounds, but the latter spellings were rejected for being similar to the Indonesian system. However, most speakers actually pronounce ñ and ll as [i̯n] and [i̯l], respectively, with a semivowel
[i̯] which forms a diphthong
with the preceding vowel (but reduced to [n], [l] after /i/), not as the palatal consonant
s of Portuguese and Spanish. Thus, señór, traballadór are pronounced [sei̯ˈnoɾ], [tɾabai̯laˈdoɾ], and liña, kartilla are pronounced [ˈlina], [kaɾˈtila]. As a result, some writers use "in" and "il" 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 [z], which is not indigenous to Tetum but appears in many loanwords from Portuguese and Malay, often changed to [s] in old Tetum and to [ʒ] (written "j") 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, [z] and [ʒ] may occur in free variation
. For instance, the Portuguese-derived word ezemplu "example" is pronounced [eˈʒemplu] by some speakers, and conversely Janeiru "January" is pronounced [zanˈeiru]. The sound [v], also not native to the language, often shifted to [b], 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").
.
Similar disagreements over nomenclature have emerged regarding the names of other languages, such as Swahili/Kiswahili
and Punjabi/Panjabi
.
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...
, a national language
National language
A national language is a language which has some connection—de facto or de jure—with a people and perhaps by extension the territory they occupy. The term is used variously. A national language may for instance represent the national identity of a nation or country...
and one of the two official language
Official language
An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a...
s 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...
. It is also used in parts of West Timor
West Timor
West Timor is the western and Indonesian portion of the island of Timor and part of the province of East Nusa Tenggara, .During the colonial period it was known as "Dutch Timor" and was a centre of Dutch loyalists during the Indonesian National Revolution...
that adjoin East Timor, particularly in Belu Regency
Belu Regency
Belu Regency is a regency in East Nusa Tenggara province of Indonesia. Established in 1958, Belu Regency has its seat in Atambua.Belu means friend in Tetum.- External pages :...
. Some of its dialects have been greatly influenced by Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, the other official language of the country, especially in their vocabulary
Vocabulary
A person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge...
, but also in aspects of their grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
.
History and dialects
- Tetun-Dili, or Tetun-Prasa (literally "city’s Tetum"), is spoken in the capital, DiliDiliDili, spelled Díli in Portuguese, is the capital, largest city, chief port and commercial centre of East Timor.-Geography and Administration:Dili lies on the northern coast of Timor island, the easternmost of the Lesser Sunda Islands....
, and its surroundings, in the north of the country. - Tetun-Terik is spoken in the south and southwestern coastal regions.
- 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 bahasa daerah or "regional language", with no official status in IndonesiaIndonesiaIndonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
, although it is used by the Diocese of AtambuaAtambuaAtambua is a town in the East Nusa Tenggara province of Indonesia and it is the seat of Belu Regency. The city is located in the west of Timor Island. In September 1999, 250,000 refugees arrived here from East Timor, after their vote for independence and the following violence...
in Roman Catholic rites. - The Nana'ek dialect is spoken in the village of Metinaro, on the coastal road between Dili and Manatuto.
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
Portuguese Timor
Portuguese Timor was the name of East Timor when it was under Portuguese control. During this period, Portugal shared the island of Timor with the Netherlands East Indies, and later with Indonesia....
until 1975, Tetun-Prasa has always been the predominant lingua franca
Lingua franca
A lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...
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
Atoni
The Atoni are an ethnic group on Timor, in Indonesian West Timor and the East Timorese enclave of Oecussi-Ambeno. They number around 600,000. Their language is Uab Meto....
was spoken, and it was not until 1769, when the capital was moved from Lifau (Oecussi
Oecusse District
Oecusse is a district of East Timor. It is a coastal exclave in the western part of the island of Timor, separated from the rest of East Timor by West Timor, which is part of the province of Nusa Tenggara Timur, Indonesia, and which surrounds Oecusse in all directions except the north, where it...
) 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.
When Indonesia occupied East Timor in 1975, declaring it "the Republic's 27th Province", the use of Portuguese was banned, and Indonesian
Indonesian language
Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a normative form of the Riau Islands dialect of Malay, an Austronesian language which has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries....
was declared the sole official language, but the Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
adopted Tetum as its liturgical language, making it a focus for cultural and national identity. When East Timor gained its independence in 2002, Tetum and Portuguese were declared as official languages.
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
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
is more Portuguese-influenced, as many of those speakers were not educated in Indonesian.
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:- aas - "high"
- aat - "bad"
- been - "water"
- belun - "friend"
- boot - "big"
- di'ak - "good"
- domin - "love"
- ema - "person, people"
- fatin - "place"
- feto - "woman"
- foho - "mountain"
- fuan - "fruit"
- funu - "war"
- han - "food"
- hemu - "drink"
- hotu - "all"
- ida - "one"
- ki'ik - "little"
- kraik - "low"
- labarik - "child"
- lafaek - "crocodile"
- lais - "fast"
- lalenok - "mirror"
- laran - "inside"
- lia - "language"
- liafuan - "word" (from lian - voice and fuan - fruit)
- lian - "voice", "language"
- loos - "true"
- lulik - "sacred"
- mane - "man"
- maromak - "god"
- moris - "life"
- rain - "country"
- tasi - "sea"
- tebes - "very"
- teen - "dirt"
- toos - "hard"
- uluk - "first"
- ulun - "head"
From Portuguese
Words derived from Portuguese:- adeus - "goodbye"
- ajuda - "help"
- aprende - "learn", from aprender
- demais - "too much"
- desizaun "decision", from decisão
- edukasaun "education", from educação
- envezde "instead of", from em vez de"
- entaun - "so", "well", from então
- eskola - "school", from escola
- governu - "government", from governo
- igreja - "church"
- istória – "history", from história
- keiju – "cheese", from queijo
- komprende – "understand", from compreender
- menus – "less", from menos
- obrigadu/a – "thanks", from obrigado/a
- paun – "bread", from pão
- povu – "people", from povo
- profesór – "teacher", from professor
- relijiaun – "religion", from religião
- semana – "week"
- serbisu – "work", from serviço
- serveja – "beer", from cerveja
- tenke – "must", from tem que
- xefe – "chief", from chefe
From Indonesian
Indonesian language
Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a normative form of the Riau Islands dialect of Malay, an Austronesian language which has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries....
include:
- atus "hundred", from ratus
- barak "much", from banyak
- bele "can", from boleh
- besi "iron", from besi
- malae "foreigner", from melayu "Malay"
- manas "hot", from panas
- rihun "thousand", from ribu
- sala "wrong", from salah
- tulun "help", from tolong
- uma "house", from rumah
Numerals
- ida "one"
- rua "two"
- tolu "three"
- haat "four"
- lima "five"
- neen "six"
- hitu "seven"
- ualu "eight"
- sia "nine"
- sanulu "ten"
- ruanulu "twenty"
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.
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 -ór (similar to '-er'). For example:Basic phrases
Plural
The plural is not normally marked on nouns, but the word sira "they" can express it when necessary.
- fetu "woman/women" → fetu sira "women"
However, the plural ending -(e)s of nouns of Portuguese origin is retained.
- Estadus Unidus – United States (from Estados Unidos)
- Nasoens Unidas – United Nations (from Nações Unidas)
Definiteness
Tetum has an indefinite article
Article (grammar)
An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...
ida ("one"), used after nouns:
- labarik ida – a child
There is no definite article, but the demonstrative
Demonstrative
In linguistics, demonstratives are deictic words that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others...
s ida-ne'e ("this one") and ida-ne'ebá ("that one") may be used to express definiteness:
- labarik ida-ne'e – this child, the child
- labarik ida-ne'ebá – that child, the child
In the plural, sira-ne'e ("these") or sira-ne'ebá ("those") are used:
- labarik sira-ne'e – these children, the children
- labarik sira-ne'ebá – those children, the children
Possessive and genitive
The particle nia forms the possessive
Possessive case
The possessive case of a language is a grammatical case used to indicate a relationship of possession. It is not the same as the genitive case, which can express a wider range of relationships, though the two have similar meanings in many languages.See Possession for a survey of the different...
, and can be used in a similar way to the Saxon genitive
Saxon genitive
In English language teaching, the term "Saxon genitive" is used to associate the possessive use of the apostrophe with the historical origin in Anglo Saxon of the morpheme that it represents...
in English, e.g.:
- João nia uma – João's house
- Cristina nia livru – Cristina's book
The genitive
Genitive case
In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...
is formed with nian, so that:
- povu Timór Lorosa'e nian – the people of East Timor
Inclusive and exclusive "we"
Like other Austronesian languages, Tetum has two forms of "we", ami (equivalent to Indonesian and Malay kami) which is exclusive, e.g. "I and they", and ita (equivalent to Indonesian and Malay kita), which is inclusive
Clusivity
In linguistics, clusivity is a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called inclusive "we" and exclusive "we"...
, e.g. "you, I, and they".
- ami-nia karreta – our [family's] car
- ita-nia rain – our country
Nominalization
Nouns derived from verbs or adjectives are usually formed with affix
Affix
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
es, for example the suffix
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 or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
-na'in, similar to "-er" in English.
- hakerek "write" → hakerek-na'in "writer"
In more traditional forms of Tetum, the circumfix
Circumfix
A circumfix is an affix, a morpheme that is placed around another morpheme. Circumfixes contrast with prefixes, attached to the beginnings of words; suffixes, that are attached at the end; and infixes, inserted in the middle. See also epenthesis...
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
Prefix
A prefix is an affix which is placed before the root of a word. Particularly in the study of languages,a prefix is also called a preformative, because it alters the form of the words to which it is affixed.Examples of prefixes:...
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.
The suffix -teen (from the word for "dirt" or "excrement") can be used with adjectives to form derogatory terms:
- bosok "false" → bosok-teen "liar"
Derivation from nouns
To turn a noun into an adjective, the particle
Grammatical particle
In grammar, a particle is a function word that does not belong to any of the inflected grammatical word classes . It is a catch-all term for a heterogeneous set of words and terms that lack a precise lexical definition...
oan is added to it.
- malae "foreigner" → malae-oan "foreign"
Thus, "Timorese" is Timor-oan, as opposed to the country of Timor, rai-Timor.
To form adjectives from verbs, the suffix -dór (derived from Portuguese) can be added:
- hateten "tell" → hatetendór "talkative"
Gender
Tetum does not have separate masculine and feminine forms of the third person singular, hence nia (similar to dia in Indonesian and Malay) can mean either "he", "she" or "it".
Different forms for the genders only occur in Portuguese-derived adjectives, hence obrigadu ("thank you") is used by males, and obrigada by females. The masculine and feminine forms of other adjectives derived from Portuguese are sometimes used with Portuguese loanwords, particularly by Portuguese-educated speakers of Tetum.
- governu demokrátiku – democratic government (from governo democrático, masculine)
- nasaun demokrátika – democratic nation (from nação democrática, feminine)
In some instances, the different gender forms have distinct translations into English:
- bonitu – handsome
- bonita – pretty
In indigenous Tetum words, the suffixes -mane ("male") and -feto ("female") are sometimes used to differentiate between the genders:
- oan-mane "son" → oan-feto "daughter"
Comparatives and superlatives
Superlatives can be formed from adjectives by reduplication
Reduplication
Reduplication in linguistics is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word is repeated exactly or with a slight change....
:
- barak "much", "many" → babarak "very much", "many"
- boot "big", "great" → boboot "huge", "enormous"
- di'ak "good" → didi'ak "very good"
- ikus "last" → ikuikus "the very last", "final"
- moos "clean", "clear" → momoos "spotless", "immaculate"
When making comparisons, the word liu ("more") is used after the adjective, followed by duké ("than" from Portuguese do que):
- Maria tuan liu duké Ana — Maria is older than Ana.
To describe something as the most or least, the word hotu ("all") is added:
- Maria tuan liu hotu — Maria is the oldest.
Adverbs
Adverbs can be formed from adjectives or nouns by reduplication:- di'ak "good" → didi'ak "well"
- foun "new", "recent" → foufoun "newly", "recently"
- kalan "night" → kalakalan "nightly"
- lais "quick" → lailais "quickly"
- loron "day" → loroloron "daily"
Prepositions and circumpositions
The most commonly used prepositions in Tetum are iha ("in") and ba ("to" or "for") while circumpositions are widely used. These are formed by using iha, the object and the position.- iha uma laran — inside the house
- iha foho tutun — on top of the mountain
- iha meza leten — on the table
- iha kadeira okos — under the chair
- iha rai li'ur — outside the country
- iha ema leet — between the people
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:
- Timor-oan sira la'ós Indonézia-oan. — The Timorese are not Indonesians.
The word maka, which roughly translates as "who is" or "what is", can be used with an adjective for emphasis:
- João maka gosta serveja. — It's John who likes beer.
Interrogation
The interrogative
Grammatical polarity
Grammatical polarity is the distinction of affirmative and negative. In English, grammatical polarity is generally indicated by the presence or absence of the modifier not, which negates the statement. Many other languages contain similar modifiers: Italian and Interlingua have non, Spanish has...
is formed by using the words ka ("or") or ka lae ("or not").
- O bulak ka? — Are you crazy?
- O gosta ha'u ka lae? — Don't you like me?
Derivation from nouns and adjectives
Transitive verb
Transitive verb
In syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...
s are formed by adding the prefix ha- or hak- to a noun or adjective:
- been "liquid" → habeen "to liquify", "to melt"
- bulak "mad" → habulak "to drive mad"
- klibur "union" → haklibur "to unite"
- mahon "shade" → hamahon "to shade", "to cover"
- manas "hot" → hamanas "to heat up"
Intransitive verb
Intransitive verb
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb that has no object. This differs from a transitive verb, which takes one or more objects. Both classes of verb are related to the concept of the transitivity of a verb....
s are formed by adding the prefix na- or nak- to a noun or adjective:
- nabeen — (to be) liquified, melted
- nabulak — (to be) driven mad
- naklibur — (to be) united
- namahon — (to be) shaded, covered
- namanas — (to become) heated up
Mutations and conjugations (in Tetun-Terik)
In Tetun-Terik mutation
Apophony
In linguistics, apophony is the alternation of sounds within a word that indicates grammatical information .-Description:Apophony is...
of verbs occurs, resulting in different forms depending on the pronoun. For example, the verb haree (to see) in Tetun-Terik would be conjugated
Grammatical conjugation
In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories...
as follows:
- ha'u karee — I see
- ó maree — you (sing.) see
- nia naree — he/she/it sees
- ami haree — we see
- imi haree — you (pl.) see
- sira raree — they see
Past
Whenever possible, the past tense is simply inferred from the context, for example:- Horisehik ha'u han etu – Yesterday I ate rice.
However, it can be expressed by placing the adverb ona ("already") at the end of a sentence.
- Ha'u han etu ona – I've (already) eaten rice.
When ona is used with la ("not") this means "no more" or "no longer", rather than "have not":
- Ha'u la han etu ona – I don't eat rice anymore.
In order to convey that an action has not occurred, the word seidauk ("not yet") is used:
- Ha'u seidauk han etu – I haven't eaten rice (yet).
When relating an action that occurred in the past, the word tiha ("finally" or "well and truly") is used with the verb.
- Ha'u han tiha etu – I ate rice.
Future
The future tenseFuture tense
In grammar, a future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future , or to happen subsequent to some other event, whether that is past, present, or future .-Expressions of future tense:The concept of the future,...
is formed by placing the word sei ("will") before a verb:
- Ha'u sei fó hahán ba sira – I will give them food.
The negative is formed by adding la ("not") between sei and the verb:
- Ha'u sei la fó hahán ba sira – I will not give them food.
Perfect
The perfect aspectGrammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
can be formed by using tiha ona.
- Ha'u han etu tiha ona – I have eaten rice / I ate rice.
When negated, tiha ona indicates that an action ceased to occur:
- Ha'u la han etu tiha ona – I didn't eat rice anymore.
In order to convey that a past action had not or never occurred, the word ladauk ("not yet" or "never") is used:
- Ha'u ladauk han etu – I didn't eat rice / I hadn't eaten rice.
Progressive
The progressive aspectContinuous and progressive aspects
The continuous and progressive aspects are grammatical aspects that express incomplete action in progress at a specific time: they are non-habitual, imperfective aspects. It is a verb category with two principal meaning components: duration and incompletion...
can be obtained by placing the word hela ("stay") after a verb:
- Sira serbisu hela. – They're (still) working.
Imperative
The imperative moodImperative mood
The imperative mood expresses commands or requests as a grammatical mood. These commands or requests urge the audience to act a certain way. It also may signal a prohibition, permission, or any other kind of exhortation.- Morphology :...
is formed using the word ba ("go") at the end of a sentence, hence:
- Lee surat ba! – Read the letter!
The word lai ("just" or "a bit") may also be used when making a request rather than a command:
- Lee surat lai – Just read the letter.
When forbidding an action labele ("cannot") or keta ("do not") are used:
- Labele fuma iha ne'e! – Don't smoke here!
- Keta oho sira! – Don't kill them!
Orthography and phonology
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, one example being the word bainhira or "when", which has also been written as bain-hira, wainhira, waihira, uaihira. The use of "w" or "u" 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 (linguistics)
Transcription in the linguistic sense is the systematic representation of language in written form. The source can either be utterances or preexisting text in another writing system, although some linguists only consider the former as transcription.Transcription should not be confused with...
of many Portuguese words that were formerly written in their original spelling, for example, educação → edukasaun "education", and colonialismo → kolonializmu "colonialism".
More recent reforms by the INL include the replacement of the digraphs
Digraph (orthography)
A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
"nh
Nh (digraph)
Nh is a digraph of the Latin alphabet, a combination of N and H. Together with lh and the interpunct, it was a typical feature of Old Occitan, the language used by medieval troubadours.-African languages:...
" and "lh" (borrowed from Portuguese, where they stand for the phonemes /ɲ/ and /ʎ/) by "ñ
Ñ
Ñ is a letter of the modern Latin alphabet, formed by an N with a diacritical tilde. It is used in the Spanish alphabet, Galician alphabet, Asturian alphabet, Basque alphabet, Aragonese old alphabet , Filipino alphabet, Chamorro alphabet and the Guarani alphabet, where it represents...
" and "ll
Ll
Ll/ll is a digraph which occurs in several natural languages.-In English:In English, ll represents the same sound as single l:...
", respectively (as in Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
), to avoid confusion with the consonant cluster
Consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word splits....
s /nh/ and /lh/, which also occur in Tetum. Thus, senhor "sir" became señór, and trabalhador "worker" became traballadór. Some linguists favoured using "ny" (as in Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
and Filipino
Filipino language
This move has drawn much criticism from other regional groups.In 1987, a new constitution introduced many provisions for the language.Article XIV, Section 6, omits any mention of Tagalog as the basis for Filipino, and states that:...
) and "ly" for these sounds, but the latter spellings were rejected for being similar to the Indonesian system. However, most speakers actually pronounce ñ and ll as [i̯n] and [i̯l], respectively, with a semivowel
Semivowel
In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:...
[i̯] which forms a diphthong
Diphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
with the preceding vowel (but reduced to [n], [l] after /i/), not as the palatal consonant
Palatal consonant
Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...
s of Portuguese and Spanish. Thus, señór, traballadór are pronounced [sei̯ˈnoɾ], [tɾabai̯laˈdoɾ], and liña, kartilla are pronounced [ˈlina], [kaɾˈtila]. As a result, some writers use "in" and "il" 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
Apostrophe
The apostrophe is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritic mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet or certain other alphabets...
for the glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
, for example boot → bot "large" and ki'ik → kiik "small".
The sound [z], which is not indigenous to Tetum but appears in many loanwords from Portuguese and Malay, often changed to [s] in old Tetum and to [ʒ] (written "j") 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, [z] and [ʒ] may occur in free variation
Free variation
Free variation in linguistics is the phenomenon of two sounds or forms appearing in the same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by native speakers...
. For instance, the Portuguese-derived word ezemplu "example" is pronounced [eˈʒemplu] by some speakers, and conversely Janeiru "January" is pronounced [zanˈeiru]. The sound [v], also not native to the language, often shifted to [b], 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").
Name
The English spelling "Tetum" is derived from Portuguese, rather than from modern Tetum orthography. Consequently, some people regard "Tetun" as more appropriate. Although this coincides with the favoured Indonesian spelling, and the spelling 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 BeloCarlos Filipe Ximenes Belo
Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo SDB, GCL is an East Timorese Roman Catholic bishop. Along with José Ramos-Horta, he received the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize for work "towards a just and peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timor."...
.
Similar disagreements over nomenclature have emerged regarding the names of other languages, such as Swahili/Kiswahili
Swahili language
Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...
and Punjabi/Panjabi
Punjabi language
Punjabi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by inhabitants of the historical Punjab region . For Sikhs, the Punjabi language stands as the official language in which all ceremonies take place. In Pakistan, Punjabi is the most widely spoken language...
.
See also
- Languages of East TimorLanguages of East TimorThe languages of East Timor include both Austronesian and Papuan languages. The lingua franca and national language of East Timor is Tetum, an Austronesian language influenced by Portuguese, with which it has equal status as an official language. The language of the Ocussi exclave is Uab Meto...
- The Lord's Prayer in Tetum at WikisourceWikisourceWikisource is an online digital library of free content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Its aims are to host all forms of free text, in many languages, and translations. Originally conceived as an archive to store useful or important historical texts, it has...
External links
- Peace Corps East Timor Tetun Language Manual (2003)
- Intensive Tetun language courses at Dili Institute of Technology
- Pictures from a Portuguese language course, using Tetum, published in the East Timorese newspaper Lia Foun in Díli (from Wikimedia CommonsWikimedia CommonsWikimedia Commons is an online repository of free-use images, sound and other media files. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation....
) - Tetun website with sound files
- Teach yourself Tetum... an interview with some information on the history of Tetum
- Wordfinder (Tetun/English minidictionary) and other publications available from Dili Institute of Technology website
- A Traveller's Dictionary in Tetun-English and English-Tetun includes some information on grammar, based on the Tetun-Terik dialect
- Ethnologue report for Tetum
- Sebastião Aparício da Silva Project for the Protection and Promotion of East Timorese Languages
- Suara Timor Lorosae Daily newspaper in Tetum and Indonesian
- Jornal Nacional Semanário Tetum page
- Tetum dictionaries
- Tetun 1, Tetun 2 Tetun writing courses for East Timorese university students, by Catharina Williams-van Klinken, Dili Institute of Technology