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1
The Languages of Timor
1772-1997
A Literature Review
GEOFFREY HULL
Linguistic Inventory of Timor
1
Indonesia’s Groote Oost, with its bewildering and challenging variety
of languages, has repelled more linguistic researchers than it has attracted,
and as a result the vernaculars of Timor, like those of the neighbouring
islands and nearby New Guinea, are among the most underresourced in the
world today.
While Timor’s reputation as a polyglot island is well established, the
published classifications of Timorese languages in English are largely
unreliable (especially regarding the eastern, formerly Portuguese sector),
the categories and subdivisions being based on patchy and often erroneous
information: such is the case with the Timor-specific sections of the
linguistic atlases of Wurm and Hattori (1981-3),
2
and Moseley and Asher
(1994)
3
, and the Ethnologue data base.
4
Careful analysis of the linguistic data so far collected in the Linguistic
Survey of East Timor project now suggests the existence of nineteen
distinct linguistic unities in the whole of Timor and the offshore islands of
1
The author expresses his special thanks to Mr Kevin Sherlock, who offered him
generous and expert assistance during his search for writings on Timorese languages.
2
Map 40 and the notes headed “Lesser Sunda Islands and Timor”, compiled by Stephen
Wurm and James Fox.
3
See the section and maps “Australasia and the Pacific” (pp. 93-130) authored by
Stephen Wurm, and repeating the facts (and errors) in Wurm/Hattori 1981-3.
4
Edited by Barbara F. Grimes. See section “Asia” and subsections “Indonesia” and
“Nusa Tenggara” for Timorese languages. The information presented here is
substantially the same as that of Wurm/Hattori 1981-3 and Moseley/Asher 1994.
2
Wetar, Ataúro/Kambing, Semau, Roti and Ndao. From west to east these
linguistic unities may be enumerated and denominated as follows:
5
1. Ndaonese/Daonese (on Ndao island and environs);
2. Rotinese (on Roti island and environs: consisting of the Landu-
Ringgou-Oepao, Bilba-Diu-Lelenuk, Korbaffo, Bofai, Termanu-
Talae-Keka, Ba’a-Loleh, Dengka-Lelain, Thie, and Oenale-Delha
dialects);
6
3. Helong (or Kupangese: on the Timorese mainland and Semau);
7
4. Dawan (or Timorese, Atoni: consisting of the Manulai, Amarasi,
Kupangese [Amfoan-Fatuleu-Amabi], Molo, Amanuban, Amanatun,
Manlea, Biboki, Insana, Miomafo and Vaiqueno/Baikenu dialects);
5. Bekais/Welaun (widely displaced by Tetun-Belu);
8
6. Tetum/Tetun (consisting of Eastern Tetum [or Tetun-Terik], Western
Tetum [or Tetun-Belu, the latter in two distinct Portuguese- and
Malay-influenced varieties on either side of the border] and Díli
Tetum
[Tetun-Dili, Tétum-Praça/Tetun-Prasa];
7. Kemak (including the transitional Nogo dialect);
9
8. Tokodede (including the transitional Keta dialect);
9. Bunak (including the Marae dialect, split by the border);
10
5
For a tentative typological grouping of these Austronesian varieties see pp. 103 of the
present volume. Where the language-name established in English literature is different
from the vernacular form, the former is given first and the latter second, e.g.
Tetum/Tetun, Tetum-Praça/Tetun-Prasa, Mambai/Mambae, Makasai/Makasae,
Galoli/Galolen. [This listing of languages has been revised in the third impressionof
January 2001 in the light of discoveries made by the author since 1998. Ed.]
6
Because of resettlement programmes during the late Dutch colonial period favouring
Roti people as transmigrants, there are now many Rotinese-speaking districts in West
Timor. Rotinese is today the prevailing vernacular of the western part of Semau island,
and, on the mainland, of the entire coastal strip from Cape Mali (south of Kupang) to
Cape Nasikonis (north-east of Naikliu) but excluding Creole Malay-speaking Kupang
city and the few villages near Tenau where Helong survives, as well as in Soe and all the
towns and villages along the road from Kupang (Babau, Oesau, Camplong, Bokong,
Ngilmina), and in the town of Kefamenanu near the border of the Oe-Cusse enclave.
7
Formerly the vernacular of the south-western end of Timor and of Semau Island,
Helong has been marginalized by Malay and Rotinese and is now, with less than 10,000
speakers, restricted to four villages near the coastal town of Tenau (south of Kupang)
and the east coast of Semau. There seems to be little justification for making Helong
(demonstrably transitional between Rotinese and Dawan) a subgroup of a wider ‘Timor
Area Group’ as do Fox and Wurm.
8
Bekais is spoken in the Sanirin district north of Balibó and Batugadé; its speakers call
their language Welaun.
9
The Fox/Wurm statement (n. 21) that “Kemak is very closely related to Tetum” is
incorrect. Kemak is most closely related to Tokodede and Mambai.
3
10. Mambai/Mambae (consisting of the north-eastern, north-western
[Mannua], and southern [Surunese] dialects);
11. Idalaka (consisting of the Idaté, Isní, Lolein and Lakalei dialects);
11
12. Galoli/Galolen (including the Lir-Talo dialect of Wetar);
13. the Rahesuk, Resuk and Raklungu vernaculars of Ataúro, all
subdialects of the Wetarese language proper to neighbouring
Wetar);
12
10
The map of the Timor region in the Wurm/Hattori atlas ignores the existence of the
Marae dialect straddling the border of West and East Timor, and wrongly (n. 31) denies
the modern-day presence of Bunak speakers along the seaboard of south-central Timor.
11
Idalaka is an acronym coined from the names of the two geographically extreme
dialects: Ida[té and] Laka[lei]. Lolein is a colonial variety of Isní. It is spoken in the
Becora Leten and Nahaek-Lakoto districts south-east of Dili. The Wurm-Hattori atlas
map of Timor incorrectly marks Na Nahek (sic) as a western subdialect of Galoli; it also
errs in presenting ‘Lolei’ as the Mambai dialect of the Remexio district.
12
The three Atauran dialects—with the northernmost of which the dialect of nearby
Lirar is mutually intelligible—are unquestionably Wetarese, and not dialects of Galoli,
as Fox and Wurm suggest for two of them (n. 32 ). The same authors refer (ibidem) to a
supposedly Papuan language of Ataúro, the existence of which appears to be entirely
illusory: “Adabe (Atauru, Raklu Un) on Atauro Island is said to be quite different from
the Baba (= Rahesuk) and Haha (? = Resuk) dialects of Galoli also spoken on the island,
and also to show no obvious connection with other languages on Timor. The speakers of
this language have links with inhabitants of Alor and, for geographical reasons, it may
seem likely that their language is a dialect of Kolana, or perhaps of Tanglapui [= Papuan
languages]. The language has not been studied.” According to Fr Jorge Barros Duarte, a
Timorese who did missionary work on Ataúro between 1959 and 1969 and produced a
dictionary of the Atauran dialects as well as a study of local folklore with vernacular
texts, “Linguisticamente, o Ataúro pode considerar-se integrado no grupo
etnolinguístico malaio-polinésico” (Duarte 1990: i). Fr Duarte’s tripartite division of the
island into three similar dialects—Rahesuk in the north (Bikeli and Beloi), Resuk in the
south-east (Maumeta and Makili: the principal dialect) and the south-western Raklungu
(Makdadi and Manroni)—agrees with that of António de Almeida (1966), although the
latter names Resuk Umanguil. The Timor region map in the Wurm/Hattori atlas is
therefore wrong in slicing the island into three horizontal dialect-zones, ‘Adabe’ being
the middle one. Almeida states that “[le] Ràclum-U... n’est pas compris que par les
habitants de Maquedade; toutefois, entre le Ràclum-U et l’Umanguil il y a de plus
grandes affinités qu’entre ces deux idiomes et le Rai-Eço [= Rahesuk]” (p. 352). The
mistaken presumption of a Papuan language on Ataúro seems due to some erroneous
statements in Almeida’s study of 1976, cited as a reference by Fox and Wurm: “[The
Ráclu-Un] orgulham-se de o seu dialecto—Klu’un Háhàn Adábe—não manifestar
parentesco com os outros (excepto em algumas palavras) nem os da ilha de Timor;
quando pretendem conversar com os restantes povos, seus vizinhos, servem-se do Rái
Ésso” (p. 352). But in 1966 Almeida had noted how the speakers of Resuk make a
similar claim to exclusivity: “les gens du ‘suco’ de Maquile déclarent qu’ils ne
connaissent personne qui utilise leur langage, dans l’une quelconque de ces îles ou
d’autres îles indonésiennes” (p. 97). The language of the Raklungu text given in
Duarte’s study of 1984 (pp. 237-242) is unmistakably Austronesian in structure, as are
the lexemes and grammatical forms included in his dictionary. Moreover, the present
4
14. Habun;
13
15. Kawaimina (comprising the Waimaha/Waima’a/Waimoa, Kairui,
Midiki [incl. Osomoko and Hoso subdialects) and Naueti [incl.
Naumik] dialects);
14
16. Makasai/Makasae
17. Makalero/Makalere
18. Fataluku/Fatalúkunu
19. Makuva (Lovaia)
East Timor speaks sixteen of these languages (4-19); West Timor seven
of them (1-4, 6, 7 and 9). Four vernaculars (Dawan, Tetum, Kemak and the
Marae dialect of Bunak) are spoken on both sides of the provincial border
that formerly separated Dutch Timor from Portuguese Timor, and the
Wetarese and Galoli languages are split by the border between East Timor
and South-East Moluccas province (Maluku Tenggara). Languages 1-8,
10-15 and 19 display mainly Austronesian features, and languages 9, 16,
17 and 18 present mainly non-Austronesian features, some of which are
demonstrably of New Guinean origin. In all languages there are lexical
elements that have not so far been identified as either Austronesian or
Papuan and are presumed to belong to extinct aboriginal languages.
Just as there is a Galoli colony on Wetar, a variety of Fataluku is spoken
in one village (Oirata) in the south of the small offshore island of Kisar
writer has received two confirmations from inhabitants of Ataúro that no Papuan or
otherwise exotic language is spoken on their island. Perhaps the confusion is due to the
fact, mentioned by Almeida (1966), that “les populations du ‘suco’ de Maquedade ont
des parents dans l’île d’Alor” (p. 97). The speakers of Rahesuk have religious and
cultural links with Alor, since most of them are Protestants, the northern district having
been evangelized by Indonesian Baptists from the 1930s, at a time when the whole
island was still pagan. The rest of the population was converted to Catholicism in the
post-war and post-1975 periods.
13
Habun is proper to the Cribas district south of Manututo, east of Laclúbar and north of
Barique. The Wurm/Hattori map of Timor errs also in classifying ‘Habu’ as a
Kawaimina (‘Waima’a Group’) vernacular.
14
Kawaimina is an artificial and acronymic term: Ka(irui)Wai(ma’a)Mi(diki)Na(ueti).
Waimaha, Kairui and Midiki are spoken in contiguous areas, not in three islets as
indicated in the Wurm/Hattori atlas. Nor is it correct (ibidem) to list Naueti as a separate
language: the present writer is able to confirm from analyses of collected data that
Naueti belongs to the Waimaha network of dialects, a fact confirmed by António de
Almeida in his study of 1976: “Entre os Nauétis, Ócò Midíquis e Uái Má’as há evidente
parentesco—entendem-se entre si, embora ignorem se são ou não são afins
biologicamente” (p. 350). The Fox/Wurm note (29) in the Wurm/Hattori atlas that “In
the Kairui and Midiki dialect, the vocabulary is predominantly Papuan” (based on
Thomaz 1974: 296) is not accurate, nor is it evident from my analyses that “The
languages of the Waima’a group contain a very strong Papuan element, akin to Makasai,
in their vocabulary...” (Fox/Wurm, ibid.).
5
which belongs to South-East Moluccas province of Indonesia.
15
Conversely, two languages (languages 1 and 18) originally proper to
neighbouring archipelagos intrude into Timorese territory. Ndaonese is
Florinic (i.e. of the ‘Bima-Sumba’ group) and specifically of Savunese
origin; Lóvaia is a West Arafuric (South-West Moluccan) language
probably originally introduced from Kisar. While the latter may prove to
be a mixed language, its classification as predominantly non-Austronesian
or ‘Papuan’, deriving from the superficial analysis given in Capell 1972, is
almost certainly incorrect.
16
Outside its home territories, Tetum is widely spoken as a lingua franca
throughout East Timor, though it is still not fully current in the Fataluku
zone or in Oe-Cusse, where the preferred vehicular language is Malay-
Indonesian (before 1976 the non-monoglot inhabitants of these two
outlying regions would communicate with other East Timorese in
Portuguese).
17
To the indigenous vernaculars of Timor may be added four originally
foreign languages. Malay has been current in the region since the fifteenth
century as a lingua franca and is, in a creolized variety, the vernacular of
Kupang. Modern Malay-Indonesian has been the official language of the
Indonesian province of Nusa Tenggara Timur (including former Dutch
West Timor) since 1950, and of the Indonesian province of Timor Timur
(comprising the former Portuguese East Timor) since 1976. Portuguese,
present throughout the island between the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, began to be widely used in the eastern sector (including the
north-western Oe-Cusse enclave) only from the mid-nineteenth century.
Dutch was known to a limited section of the population in and around
Kupang from the mid-seventeenth century, and elsewhere in West Timor
(except Portuguese Oe-Cusse) during the nineteenth century and the first
half of the twentieth. Finally the Hakka and Cantonese dialects of Chinese
are spoken by the Sino-Timorese minority, the island’s traditional
merchant class.
18
15
This dialect is evidently Fataluku and not Makasai in general character, as has
sometimes been suggested. Capell (1944: II, 328) recognized that Oirata “certainly is not
derived directly from modern Makasai”, though, having no access to Fataluku data, he
was unable to make the right connection. The ancestors of the population of Oirata
village are said to have migrated from Loikera in Timor.
16
Capell’s erroneous classification is repeated in Wurm/Hattori 1981-3 (ibidem), who
make it a member of a ‘Timor-Alor-Pantar’ Papuan grouping.
17
There are some 15,000 Tetum speakers in Australia and about a third that number in
Portugal. The second generation in both diasporas is undergoing a language shift to
English and Portuguese respectively. Non-Tetum Timorese languages are in an even
weaker position in the émigré communities.
18
Cantonese is spoken mainly by Sino-Timorese of Macanese origin.
6
Since the end of Dutch and Portuguese rule, the Dutch language has all
but disappeared in the west; Portuguese, bolstered by the Catholic Church
and a certain amount of popular nostalgia for the colonial past maintains,
by contrast, a strong social presence in East Timor, in spite of
discouragement from the Indonesian administration. The recent extension
of satellite television to East Timor now allows the population to watch the
Portuguese state channel and is renewing enthusiasm for Portuguese
language and culture among the younger Indonesian-educated generation.
There is a colony of Savunese speakers in the Kupang district; and since
the proclamation of Portuguese Timor as an Indonesian province in 1976,
Jakarta’s transmigration policy has brought into the territory speakers of
Javanese, Balinese and other Indonesian languages (these non-East
Timorese now accounting for about one tenth of the population).
Early Descriptions of Timorese Languages
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Corresponding to all the names of
authors printed in boldface in the following sections are titles of
books and articles listed in the bibliography at the end of this article.
In the first centuries of colonial rule, the Dutch and Portuguese who
came to exploit the island as a reserve of sandalwood and slaves took little
interest in the local languages, and generally communicated with their
subjects either in their own tongue (the Portuguese especially) or in Malay.
If any attempts were made by the odd clergyman or learned gentleman to
compile wordlists of Timorese vernaculars, none of these has survived.
Early references to local languages by Portuguese writers tend to be
uncurious and banal, for example the observation of the Jesuit, Baltasar
Dias, in 1562 that “a lingoa desta gente dizem ser muito curta, conforme
em algumas cousas com a malaia...”
19
The honour of leaving us the first description of local languages goes to
a Frenchman, F. E. de Rosily, who visited the north coast of East Timor in
1772, and appended to the mémoire on his stay there a glossary of 417
mots timoriens which were not from one language, but culled
indiscriminately from Galoli, Makasai, Tetum and possibly also Waimaha.
This manuscript has never been edited and published, though a short
review of it was made by the Portuguese philologist, Luis Filipe Thomaz,
in 1982.
19
“The language of this people is said to be very brief, similar in some respects to
Malay”. Quoted in Sá 1952: 41.
7
The next known contribution came from a Dutch resident of West
Timor, G. Heijmering, who in 1846 composed notes on the vocabularies
of four West Timorese languages (Rotinese, Helong, Dawan and Belunese
Tetum). Two years later an English traveller, George Earl, published lists
of words and phrases taken from languages of Timor and the Southern
Moluccas. The renowned naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who had
visited the island in the course of his eight-year tour of the East Indies,
included specimens from three Timor vernaculars (Tetum, Vaiqueno and
the Brissi dialect of Dawan) in his nine-word comparative vocabulary of
Indonesian languages, an appendix to the travelogue he published in
London in 1869. Wallace had actually collected 117 words from each of
these vernaculars, but the notes he had brought back from Indonesia were
unfortunately lost before the book went to press.
20
Meanwhile Portuguese
curiosity about the glottological riches of Timor was minimal. Scarcely
worthy of mention is the superficial two and a half page description of
Timorese peoples and languages which Major José dos Santos Vaquinhas
sent from Macao to the Lisbon Geography Society in 1884.
In 1885 the Vicar General of the Catholic Church in Timor (then part of
the diocese of Macao) sent a long letter to the Austrian linguist Hugo
Schuchardt, who was researching Creole languages and had sought
information on the sort of Portuguese spoken in Díli. In his communication
this churchman described the linguistic situation in the capital (where
Tetum, not any form of Portuguese, was the vernacular) and appended a
list of Tetum words and expressions with their Portuguese translations.
21
Not long before this letter was written, a Scottish lady, Anna Forbes,
visited Portuguese Timor with her naturalist husband from December 1882
to June 1883, and in the published account of her Indonesian tour (1887)
she commented on the remarkable fact that Malay was not current in the
colony as it was everywhere else in the East Indies, the natives having to
learn Portuguese to communicate with their European rulers.
22
20
Caveat commodator! Poor Wallace wrote in the preface to his Appendix (Wallace
1869: 462): “Unfortunately, nearly half the number [of collected word-lists] have been
lost. Some years ago I lent the whole series to the late Mr. John Crawford, and having
neglected to apply for them for some months, I found that he had in the meantime
changed his residence, and that the books, containing twenty-five of the vocabularies
[including those from Timor], had been mislaid; and they have never since been
recovered. Being merely old and much battered copy-books, they probably found their
way to the dust-heap along with other waste paper.”
21
Letter from the Vigário Geral e Superior das Missões de Timor, Díli, to Dr Hugo
Schuchardt, dated 3 November, 1885; Unclassified materials, Box A, Schuchardt
Collection, University of Graz Library (Austria). Quoted in Baxter 1990: 3-6, 29-32.
22
“It is strange to hear no Malay in Timor. This language is heard otherwise all over the
civilised archipelago; but natives here must learn the language of the possessors if they
will have any contact with them. Our friends have considerable difficulty in making
their wants intelligible to their servants. (...) Our Amboina servants who had been with
8
Missionary spadework
Two practical outcomes of contemporary Portuguese and Dutch
decisions late in the nineteenth century to evangelize the pagan population
of Timor in their mother tongues were the production of catechetical,
devotional, liturgical and biblical texts in various vernaculars, and the
compilation of vocabularies and dictionaries intended to help newly-
arrived missionaries to communicate with converts, catechumens and
friendly animists. Lexicographical projects were thus undertaken in both
Dutch Timor and Portuguese Timor from 1890 onwards.
In 1890 a Rotinese-Malay vocabulary authored by Pello (a native of
Roti) appeared in a Dutch journal. In the following decade two Dutch-
educated Rotinese produced grammars of their mother tongue (Fanggidaej
1892 and Manafe 1889). The Dutch Catholic missionary Fr A. Mathijsen
brought out a (West) Tetum-Malay wordlist in 1894, followed in 1906 by a
Tetum-Dutch dictionary with an accompanying grammatical description.
Two years later Johan Christoph Jonker published in Holland his
monumental Rotinese-Dutch dictionary.
Meanwhile in the Portuguese sector Fr Sebastião da Silva had drawn up
a Portuguese-Tetum dictionary, printed in Macao in 1889, and a Tetum
grammar which has subsequently been lost, as regrettably have been Fr
Manuel Neto’s three unpublished dictionaries of the Waimaha, Makasai
and Vaiqueno languages.
23
Also published in Macao (the administrative as
well as ecclesiastical centre for Portuguese Timor) were Fr Manuel da
Silva’s grammar of the Galoli language (1900) and his Portuguese-Galoli
dictionary in 1905. In 1907 a Portuguese layman, Raphael das Dores,
complemented Fr Sebastião da Silva’s work by presenting to the public a
Tetum-Portuguese dictionary including a grammatical synopsis and a list
of idioms. Around 1903 Manuel Martins Pereira compiled a Tokodede-
Portuguese vocabulary (“Vocabulário em tucodede”) that was destined to
remain unpublished. In the first few decades of the twentieth century
catechisms, prayer-books and Gospel translations were also prepared by
various priests in the Tetum, Galoli, Makasai, Midiki and Mambai
vernaculars.
us in Timor-laut [= Yamdena] said they would willingly accompany us to any other
island of the archipelago except Timor, where their language was not spoken, and the
natives were so different” (Forbes 1887, 1987: 241).
23
Manuel Calisto Duarte Neto, “Dicionário da língua uaima’a”; “Dicionário da língua
macassai”; “Dicionário da língua d’Ocussi” (the latter corrected and revised by Dona
Natália Maria da Conceição, a Timorese schoolmistress). The three are mentioned in
Domingues 1947: 149. Fr Neto was in Timor from 1896 to 1902.
9
A great patron of language research in the Netherlands East Indies was
the philanthropist K.F. Holle, who in 1880 conceived the plan of
formulating a basic word-list of some 1000 items and sending it to every
corner of the vast colony outside Java and Bali for completion in local
languages by schoolmasters and missionaries. Three editions of the
questionnaire (1894, 1904 and 1931) were circulated, and 244 of the
completed lists were subsequently lodged in the manuscript room of the
National Museum in Jakarta. These were finally edited by W. Stokhof in
collaboration with Lia Saleh-Bronkhorst and Alma Almanar, and published
from 1980 by the Australian National University’s Research School of
Pacific Studies in their Pacific Linguistic Series.
24
Three volumes of the Holle Lists (which naturally exclude the territory
of Portuguese Timor) are of direct interest to students of Timorese
languages. Volume 6 (1983), entitled The Lesser Sunda Islands (Nusa
Tenggara), offers two Rotinese lists (for the Ba’a and Termanu dialects),
three Western Tetum (Belu) lists, one Marae (Bunak) list, but surprisingly
nothing for the numerically predominant Dawan language. Volume 3/1
covers the Southern Moluccas as well as part of Ceram; the list for Wetar
is in the Talur dialect the Galoli language. A vocabulary for the Wetarese
dialect of Erai is given in Volume 11.
Analysis and classification of Timorese languages
By the 1870s Dutch linguists were analysing the religious texts,
vocabularies and grammatical sketches produced by Protestant and
Catholic missionaries in various languages of the Netherlands East Indies,
and in the last three decades of the nineteenth century (1873-1894) a
succession of studies on Dawan and Rotinese appeared in the Dutch East
Indies and Holland, the work of W.M. Donselaar (1873), J.G. Riedel
(1889), E.F. Kleian (1894).
Growing knowledge of Timorese languages thanks to these Dutch
initiatives enabled comparative philologists of the day to seek wider
affiliations. Similarities between Malay and other Indonesian languages
had been noted by Europeans since the beginning of the eighteenth
century, and by 1784 the Spanish Jesuit Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro had
demonstrated the existence of a ‘Malayo-Polynesian’ family covering
immense expanses of the Indo-Pacific region.
Broadly contemporary with the other great milestones of Austronesian
philology—H.A. Kern’s use of van der Tuuk’s sound laws to seek the
Austronesian homeland (1889), Codrington’s investigation of the
Melanesian languages (1895) and Brandstetter’s attempted reconstruction
24
For bibliographical details, see pp. 168-9 of the present volume.
10
of Proto-Austronesian (1916)—was the work of J.L.A. Brandes who, after
familiarizing himself with the Dutch literature on East Indonesian
languages, divided Malayo-Polynesian into western and eastern subgroups
(1884). The criterion Brandes used for this division was the reversed
genitive construction typical of the Timor-Moluccan languages (God his
house for ‘God’s house’), earlier studied by Baron van Hoëvell (1877).
The line of demarcation, henceforth known as the ‘Brandes Line’,
separated the Moluccas from Celebes and ran through the middle of Flores.
Cautious about lumping the East Indonesian languages together with those
of Oceania, Kern (1906) classed them instead as a transitional group
between the great western and eastern varieties of the Austronesian
phylum.
25
Dutch scholarship on Timorese languages continued to flourish in the
first decades of the twentieth century. Jonker produced articles and books
on Rotinese, Helong (‘Kupangsch’), Dawan (‘Timoreesch’) in publications
of 1906, 1908, 1915 and 1921. A later study of 1932 on the vernacular of
Leti (the South Moluccan island nearest the eastern tip of Timor) would
be, because of its strongly etymological emphasis, of considerable value to
scholars of Timorese languages.
Meanwhile in Portuguese Timor, as knowledge of the Portuguese
language spread, the cultivation of Tetum (still the preserve of the Catholic
clergy) was pursued less for its own sake than as a means of ‘civilizing’
the natives, a stepping-stone in the process of linguistic and cultural
assimilation. A trickle of vernacular texts (mainly religious), grammars and
vocabularies continued during the first three decades of the twentieth
century, including Fr Manuel Mendes Laranjeira’s Tetum grammar
approved for primary school use in 1916 and reprinted in 1932, and Júlio
Garcêz de Lencastre’s brief notes on Tetum grammar and vocabulary
printed in 1929.
If scientific linguistic treatises were not typical Portuguese products of
the interwar period, much progress was made in ethnology by António
Augusto Mendes Corrêa, who in studies begun in 1916 and summarized
in 1944, confirmed the Proto-Malay racial identity of the peoples of East
Timor and the Papuan-Melanesian ethnicity of most of the West Timorese.
The forays into linguistics of Corrêa’s colleague António Leite de
Magalhães (1920) were less successful. While Magalhães’ reduction of
the 24 reputed dialects of Timor to seven main systems was reasonable, his
theory of a Sumatran Batak origin for the Austronesian languages of the
25
Jonker (1914) would express his scepticism about dividing the Indonesian languages
on syntactic grounds in an article entitled: “Kan men de talen van den Indischen archipel
eene westelijke en eene oostelijk afdeeling onderscheiden?”
11
island was pure fantasy, and all the worse for the eccentric etymologies he
proposed for many Timorese place-names.
26
Lexicography was, by contrast, a fertile field of Portuguese scholarly
endeavour. A major project was undertaken jointly by two Portuguese
missionaries who had devoted themselves to the study of Tetum. Fr
Manuel Mendes, stationed in Ainaro during the First World War, had been
compiling a list of some 1000 words derived from earlier works and from
consultation with Tetum-speakers. In 1915, when Fr Manuel Laranjeira
(future author of the Cartilha Tétum) visited Ainaro from the Alas mission,
he informed his confrère that he had been working on a similar task.
Laranjeira’s superior in Alas, Fr João Lopes, then suggested that the two
priests collaborate on the production of a much-needed Portuguese-Tetum
dictionary. The scholars agreed to go on working independently for a time
before convening at the Soibada central mission a committee of Tetum
native-speakers from Díli, Alas, Samoro, Barique, Lacluta, Luca,
Bubussuço and Viqueque to advise them on the final draft. The work of
correcting and editing the entries took the best part of a decade; Laranjeira
left Timor in 1927, and Mendes was unable to do anything about
publishing until his transfer to Macao in 1930. The completed dictionary,
containing some 8,000 entries, was finally printed in Macao in 1935. This
was a comprehensive work, its entries including Tetun-Terik, Western
Tetum (‘tétum holandês’) and Tetum-Díli forms.
Two more ambitious lexicographical projects were undertaken at this
time by Fr António Grebaldo da Conceição Fernandes, who composed a
Portuguese-Tetum-Bunak-Kemak dictionary, and Fr Porfírio Campos,
author of a Dicionário ideológico universal das línguas de Timor. Sadly,
both manuscripts of these unpublished works were destroyed during the
Second World War.
27
In 1937 Fr Abílio Fernandes published a well-
designed Portuguese-medium Tetum course for the use of Europeans
resident in the colony. This work included a substantial Portuguese-Tetum
vocabulary.
A significant pre-war Dutch contribution was J. de Josselin de Jong’s
1937 description of the non-Austronesian Oirata language of Kisar which
the author, unaware of its direct Fataluku origin, thought to be a close
relative of Makasai.
De Josselin de Jong followed up this book ten years
later (1947) with a similar study of the dialect and culture of the
inhabitants of Erai, Wetar.
The contribution of Arthur Capell
26
These theories were suggested by a handful of lexical specimens John Williams’
description of Captain King’s reports of Batak voyages to Australia via Timor.
27
According to Fr Ernesto Domingues; see Domingues 1947: 149.
12
Quite fortuitously the first general linguistic survey of the island of
Timor was the accomplishment of an Australian scholar, Arthur Capell. In
1943 Dr Capell, a lecturer at Sydney University, had an opportunity to visit
at the Bob’s Farm refugee camp near Newcastle (New South Wales) a
group of about 500 East Timorese who had recently been evacuated by
Australian troops from Japanese-occupied Portuguese Timor.
28
He
conducted linguistic research among these people, having at the same time
the good fortune to receive from the then Portuguese consul, Senhor
Álvaro Brilhante Laborinho, a copy of Captain José Martinho’s recently
published (1943) history of Portuguese Timor which included a 160-page
description of the Tetum language.
The fruits of Dr Capell’s labours were subsequently printed as a three-
part article Peoples and Languages of Timor in the 1943 and 1944 issues
of the Australian journal Oceania.
29
The first part of the article, mainly
summarizing the work of earlier scholars, was concerned with the
ethnology of Timor; Parts II and III dealt with language, providing
analyses of phonology and morphosyntax as well as a comparative wordlist
of some 170 items and a short text translated into the languages Capell was
able to study: Tetum, Tokodede, Mambai (evidently the southern dialect),
Galoli, Waimaha, Vaiqueno, Bunak, Makasai; and (from Dutch printed
sources) West Tetum (‘Belu’), Dawan and Helong. At the end of Part II
was an appended note on “The Oirata Language”, and though Capell did
not have any Fataluku data to guide him, he was perceptive enough to note
that “the language is much fuller [i.e. less eroded], and certainly is not
derived directly from modern Makasai” — in fact an apt summation of the
structural differences between mainland Fataluku and Makasai.
30
The typological dualism in the ethnic and linguistic structure of Timor
impressed Capell from the first: “There is an apparently aboriginal
substratum, commoner in some areas than in others, and an obviously
intrusive Indonesian element... [and] this double composition is reflected
in the languages of the island.”
31
Another tempting parallelism for the
author was the correlation between the (supposedly) Papuan rather than
Malay racial character of Timor and the apparently Melanesian rather than
Indonesian nature of its Austronesian languages. From Capell’s
observations “the Indonesian element in such languages as Tetum,
Tukudede and Galoli is comparatively small, and these languages belong
28
Most of these people were accommodated at the Bob’s Farm camp, though some
remained in Sydney and Melbourne and some may have gone to a similar camp near
Armidale.
29
The study was later the same year reprinted as a volume by the Australian Medical
Publishing Company Ltd, Sydney.
30
Capell 1943/4: II, 328-9.
31
Capell 1943/4: I, 194.
13
to the ‘eastern’ section of the Indonesian group which is practically
Melanesian in structure.”
32
Dr Capell followed Brandes (1884) and G. Friederici (1913) in placing
the demarcation line between Indonesian and Melanesian languages
between Sumba and Timor. This division cut Flores in two and left
Celebes west of the line and the Moluccas east of it.
33
He nonetheless
stressed the autonomy of the Timor Austronesian languages, to whatever
division they might be deemed to belong by other linguists: “Timor and
certain of its ethnological dependencies still form a regional group or
province within that area, be it labelled one or the other.”
34
Having before him two earlier linguists’ identification of the aberrant
languages of northern Halmahera as non-Austronesian (Schmidt 1900,
van der Veen 1915), Capell recognized a parallel situation in Timor and
invoked the nebulous but convenient concept of ‘Papuan’ as a starting-
point. “The non-Indonesian languages do not bear any Australian
affinities, but belong to that group which is vaguely called ‘Papuan’. (...)
The only other recorded non-Indonesian languages in this part of Indonesia
are those of northern Halmahera, but to this group the languages of Timor
do not seem to bear any relation...”
35
Although he noted some structural similarities with the North
Halmahera languages, Capell was unable at this stage to trace any direct
links between Bunak and Makasai (the only two non-Austronesian Timor
languages he was able to study) and known languages of New Guinea.
Caution was the keynote of Capell’s discussion of their possible
provenance, and he preferred to use ‘Papuan’ as a merely provisional label:
“It has fallen to the present author to demonstrate that in Timor also there
exists a group of ‘Papuan’ languages. He personally prefers to drop that
term entirely, and merely call them non-Indonesian. This term at any rate
does not suggest that the languages grouped under it are in any ways
related to each other: a glance at New Guinea will show that that is not
so.”
36
Indeed from his own data Capell could not find much evidence that
Bunak and Makasai were closely related: “Of the two non-IN languages
here treated... [they] show very little better agreement with each other than
with outside languages.”
37
In his study Dr Capell overestimated (through lack of information or
through misinformation) the number of ‘Papuan’ languages in Timor, and
wrongly classified as ‘Non-Indonesian’ two languages which are definitely
32
Capell 1943/4: I, 194.
33
The Brandes line in turn corresponded roughly to the ‘Wallace Line’, which marked
the boundary between zones of Asian and Australian fauna in Eastern Indonesia.
34
Capell 1943/4: III, 20.
35
Capell 1943/4: I, 195-6.
36
Capell 1943/4: II, 311, 313.
37
Capell 1943/4: II, 326.
14
Austronesian: Kairui and Kemak.
38
As for Waimaha, a speaker of which
the author was able to interview in the refugee camp, Capell considered it
“in bulk Indonesian” but showing “mixture with a non-Indonesian type,
and this in certain things which are lacking in the Makasai and Bunak.”
39
Wartime and post-war language and linguistic studies
Dutch scholarly concern with West Timor and its languages waned after
the Netherlands finally lost their colony to the new Indonesian Republic in
1950. Among the few Dutch publications of interest from the post-
independence decade are Fr Wilco Wortelboer’s German article of 1955
on the language and culture of the Western Belunese and their neighbours,
and the 1957 grammar of Dawan by the ethnologist and Bible translator
Pieter Middelkoop.
By contrast the Japanese occupation of politically-neutral Portuguese
Timor during World War II shocked Portugal into a greater appreciation of
her most distant colony. In 1944, the year after Captain Martinho
published his historical work on East Timor lamenting “a ocupação de
Timor no ano findo por fôrças armadas estrangeiras, facto que tanto
impressionou a nação”,
40
António Corrêa brought out his anthropological
survey which included a chapter on “Línguas e raças em Timor”. Moreover
the erection of the new Catholic diocese of Díli in 1940, the effort put into
rebuilding Portuguese Timor’s infrastructure after the war and the
upgrading of the colony’s status to that of a província ultramarina in 1953
all bestowed (in European eyes) a new dignity on the indigenous culture
and gave a boost to investigative studies on the local languages.
Fr Ernesto Domingues SJ took stock of previous linguistic endeavours
in a useful bibliographical article of 1947. Manuel Ferreira, a member of
the colonial civil service, contributed to Seara, the Catholic diocesan
journal, a sketchy description of the Lóvaia language of the Tutuala district
(1951). Then, in 1953, Dr António de Almeida, a specialist in tropical
38
II, 314. Refugees in Australia had told Dr Capell that Kemak was related to Bunak,
but the relationship between them is social rather than linguistic; the confusion could
have been due to the fact that in the Maliana district many people are bilingual. Capell’s
unwitting error regarding the classification of Kemak was corrected in 1967 by an
American linguist from the University of Michigan, who had visited Indonesian Timor
in June 1961, collected in Atambua a 200 word Swadesh list for the West Timorese
dialect of Kemak, and easily concluded that it was fully Austronesian (see Stevens
1967). In Portugal Frederico José Hopffer Rêgo independently made (from personal
experience in Timor) the same confirmation the following year, see Rêgo 1968: 65.
39
Capell 1944: II, 325. Dr Capell’s article was reviewed a few years later in Portugal by
António Augusto Mendes Corrêa; see Corrêa 1949/1950.
40
Martinho 1943: 1.
15
medicine, was sent out from Lisbon as the head of the new Missão
Antropológica de Timor, which was active for over a decade.
Professor Almeida conducted mainly anthropological research, but he
always took linguistic realities into account. Among other things he made,
in collaboration with Prof. Ernest Westphal, an accurate classification of
the 31 ethnolinguistic groups of the colony, whose characteristic dialects
were reduced to seven main linguistic systems (“verdadeiras línguas”:
Vaiqueno, Maku’a, Fataluku, Makasai, Tetum-Galoli-Waimaha, and
Mambai-Tokodede-Kemak). This study (complete with a linguistic map of
Portuguese Timor) was edited and published by Almeida’s daughter,
Maria Emília de Castro e Almeida, but not until 1982, two decades after
the author’s return to Portugal, and two years before his death. In the
course of his researches in 1953 and 1954, Almeida had also made an
ethnographic study of the Timorese peoples (1976) and collected and tape-
recorded specimens of each dialect.
41
A Timor-based colleague of
Professor Almeida’s, Ruy Cinatti Gomes, compiled a glossary of
indigenous plant-names, published in an article of 1954, and ‘Peregrino
de Sunda’ prepared a brief notice on East Timorese languages for a 1958
issue of the Macanese journal O Clarim.
Fr Artur Basílio de Sá was the first trained linguist from Portugal to
take an interest in Timorese languages. A secular priest stationed in Timor
since 1937, he studied the phonology of Tetum and laid the bases of a
phonetic spelling system in an article of 1952. Nine years later Fr Sá
published in Lisbon a collection of commentated Tetum texts, with
occasional notes on language and culture (Sá 1961). In a paper contributed
to the 1968 volume of the Lisbon journal Colóquios sobre as Províncias
do Oriente, Frederico José Hopffer Rêgo, after lamenting the dearth of
analytical studies founded on linguistic field work in East Timor,
42
offered
an intelligent discussion of Capell’s 1944 study, to which he added several
new points of interest.
In 1964 Fr Abílio Fernandes’ 1937 Tetum primer was reprinted in an
abridged form (Pequeno método prático para aprender o tétum) by the
headquarters of the Comando Territorial Independente de Timor. This was
another ‘stepping-stone’ publication, with the loaded intention of helping
Portuguese men on military service to communicate and fraternize with the
natives of the colony in their common ‘dialect’ so that the European
speakers could in turn spread knowledge of the ‘national’ language by
introducing as many Portuguese words as possible into their improvised
41
Dr Alan Baxter (1990: 35, n. 11) notes that “The recordings have survived to the
present in poor acoustic condition, to the extent that a good deal of the material defies
transcription even on the best of equipment.”
42
“...cabe uma referência a quão magro tem sido até hoje o resultado de quaisquer
estudos efectuados no Timor Português sobre a matéria...” (Rêgo 1968: 61).
16
Tetum. Although Portuguese living in Timor had traditionally tended to
learn Tetum (contributing to its creolization), the notice to soldiers printed
at the back of the handbook (Finalidade deste trabalho) makes no secret of
this assimilatory policy of the government:
“The publication of this work does not mean that this Command has
abandoned its Directive concerning our need to strive to make the peoples of
Timor learn and use Portuguese.
This work is intended only, and, given our aims, must be used only to
facilitate intelligent communication between our soldiers and the native
populations who understand this dialect.
It will be easier to gain their initial confidence and friendship if they hear
from the lips of metropolitan soldiers words of sympathy and encouragement
in their own language.
In our future coexistence, soldiers must consider it their duty
progressively to replace Tetum with Portuguese, first in the most commonly
used words, then in basic expressions, until fluent conversation [in
Portuguese] becomes possible.
Certainly this is a tedious and difficult task. But the Command counts on
your enthusiasm and dedication... And never forget: Approach those who are
most isolated and be worthy of their confidence, so that later they will follow
you.” (emphasis in text)
43
43
Original text: A difusão deste trabalho não representa o abandono da Directiva
emanada deste Comando, sobre a necessidade de lutarmos pela aprendizagem e
utilização do português, entre os povos de Timor. Este trabalho apenas se destina, e com
esse fim apenas deve ser utilizado, a facilitar a acção psicológica dos nossos soldados
junto das populações nativas que entendem este dialecto. Será mais fácil captar a sua
confiança e amizade iniciais se da boca dos soldados metropolitanos, ouvirem, na sua
linguagem, palavras de compreensão e estímulo. Na convivência futura, o soldado tem
por dever, progressivamente, ir substituindo o tétum por português, primeiro nas
palavras de mais utilização, depois em pequenas expressões, até a conversação corrente.
É trabalho moroso e difícil, é certo. Porém, o Comando confia no vosso entusiasmo e
dedicação,... E NÃO TE ESQUEÇAS: APROXIMA-TE DOS MAIS ISOLADOS E SÉ
MERECEDOR DA SUA CONFIANÇA, PARA QUE DEPOIS ELES TE SIGAM.”
17
A policy literally translated into reality in the post-war decades as the
Tetum vernacular of Díli became more and more lusified and the
indigenous élite in the capital became more exclusively lusophone.
One of the results of the cultural relaxation that followed the retirement
of Salazar in 1968 was a more liberal attitude towards the indigenous
languages of Portugal’s overseas provinces. In East Timor Seara carried
regular stories and translations in Tetum as well as feature articles on
aspects of indigenous culture. In each issue of the journal from December
1971 until 1973 appeared a regular column on Tetum grammar by
Armindo da Costa Tilman.
44
Nor was the vernacular of Baucau, East
Timor’s second city, neglected: in 1973 the Salesian fathers printed a small
grammar of Makasai.
45
A worthy successor of Father Sá as a philologist
was Luís Filipe Thomaz, who in 1969 volunteered for three years’ service
in Timor and published in the last year of Portuguese rule (1974) a concise
synthetic study of the overseas province’s linguistic history and
sociolinguistic conditions.
The FRETILIN government that came to power in 1975 resolved to
elevate Tetum to the status of a national language,
46
and the Catholic
school system began to take steps to teach the language formally. One
practical result was a grammar book for high schools devised by an
anonymous Jesuit of the Externato de São José in Díli.
47
Indonesian and Indonesian-sponsored contributions
In 1976, the year after Indonesian troops entered East Timor, two
Indonesians, J.P. Serantes and I.H. Doko, published in Java a simple
Indonesian-medium course for speakers of Eastern Tetum, a Tetum-
Indonesian conversation manual, and a hastily prepared and misprint-
ridden vocabulary giving the Tetun-Dili and (Western) Tetun-Belu
44
Armindo da Costa Tilman, “Mata dalan lia Tetum nian”, Seara, Dili, Dec. 1971 -
1973.
45
Pequena gramática macassae, Baucau: Centro Juvenil Salesiano, 1973.
46
See for instance p. 1 of Supplement No. 1 to the 1 November 1975 edition of the
Fretilin government newspaper Timor Leste (No. 6): “Para ser eficaz, a alfabetização
deve ser dada na língua materna. Na nossa Pátria sugerimos que seja em tetum. No
entanto, camaradas de outras zonas podem adaptar a ideia geral aqui traçada à língua
materna dessa zona. (...) Ao propor o tetum não só estamos cientes de que mais de 50
por cento do Povo Mau Bere falam o tetum, mas essencialmente a construção de uma
sólida UNIDADE NACIONAL.”
47
Regras elementares de Tétum: Ano lectivo de 1974/5, .Lahane: Externato de São José
em Bispo Medeiros, 1975.
18
equivalents of common Indonesian words. An undated 24-page handbook
by J. Presto with dialogues in Eastern Tetun-Belu and Indonesian
appeared the following year (1977).
Although a number of East Timorese high school graduates were sent
by the Indonesian authorities to universities in Kupang and Java, only one
of these, Benjamim de Araújo e Corte-Real, studied linguistics. This
young scholar produced in 1990 a solid Master of Arts thesis on the
phonology of Tetum. The need for a reliable dictionary in Tetum,
Indonesian and Portuguese was met by another East Timorese, Domingos
Dores Soares in 1985.
Meanwhile Indonesians were becoming better acquainted with the
lingua franca of the formerly Portuguese half of Timor. E. Masinambow
attempted in 1980 a description of the sociolinguistic situation in the new
province. However, most Indonesian studies of Tetum concentrated on the
dialect of West Timor, where conditions for research were more
favourable: these include a Tetum-Indonesian dictionary published by
Fransiskus Monteiro in 1985, a co-authored analysis of phonology and
morphosyntax (Troeboes et al. 1987), and one joint studies of morphology
(Saliwangi et al. 1991 and et al. 1992). This changed in the early 1990s,
with Soedjiatno and other scholars publishing an analysis of Eastern
Tetum morphology in 1992, and Inyo Yos Fernandes making in 1996 a
study on the reversed genitive construction in Eastern Indonesia which
focused on Eastern Tetum, Lamaholot and the Mai Brat language of the
Vogelkop Peninsula of West Irian.
Dawan also received a good deal of scholarly attention in the 1980s and
1990s through the (mostly unpublished) studies of Indonesians Urias Bait
and others (1988), Yakobus Kusi (1990), Felysianus Sanga (1989),
Ludofikus Talul (1988), Tarno and others (1989), and of the Dutch
linguist Hein Steinhauer (1993, 1996). Helong fared less well with
scholars: only one Indonesian linguist, Sasdi Maryanto, appears to have
made a study of it, in 1977.
48
A Dutch Jesuit priest, Fr. Albert Rutten, who had served for many
years in Java and was transferred to the Dili Minor Seminary in the early
1990s, compiled a 73-page Indonesian-Tetum dictionary which was
printed in a private edition in 1995.
Luso-Timorese contributions
A few of the languages of East Timor were beneficiaries of
lexicographical endeavour during the same period. For the Wetarese
dialects of Ataúro Fr Jorge Barros Duarte, a Timorese scholar-priest,
48
Anthropologist J.J. Fox had published a brief notice on Helong in F.M. LeBar, ed.,
Ethnic Groups of Insular Southeast Asia, vol. I, New Haven: Human Relations Area
Files Press, p. 105. On page 109 Fox also mentions Ndaonese.
19
provided in 1990 a small dictionary and with a grammatical synopsis.
49
There was a pressing practical need for resources in Fataluku, the Papuan
language of the island’s east end, since its speakers knew little Tetum and
therefore could not be easily reached by missionaries through the lingua
franca. Fr Alfonso Nácher, a Catalan member of the Salesian mission of
Fuiloro, completed in 1984 a large 275-page Fataluku dictionary, with the
listed words, idioms and illustrative sentences glossed in Tetum and
Makasai. This untitled work was revised in January 1992 and printed
without the author’s name in a private edition.
In 1990 Makasai found its champion in an expatriate native of Baucau,
Tito Lívio Nunes Marques, who printed in Lisbon his Método prático
para aprender o makasae. This useful, accurate and well-planned volume
of 161 pages includes a guide to pronunciation, a grammatical synopsis, a
set of topical vocabularies, 36 Makasai dialogues with Portuguese
translation (including a guided tour of Lisbon!), and a long Makasai-
Portuguese vocabulary.
Mr Marques was not the only member of the East Timorese refugee
community in Portugal to cultivate his mother tongue in exile. Several
individuals prepared Tetum poems and stories for community journals, and
the Fundação Borja da Costa sponsored in particular the publication of
literary texts in Tetun-Terik. Among the well-educated East Timorese who
found new homes in Portugal was Armindo Tilman, author of the 1971-3
Seara articles on Tetum mentioned above. In 1996 Tilman published a
new, expanded handbook on Tetun-Terik containing grammatical
paradigms and literary texts, and exercises for second-generation students
of the language. Although the author is not a trained linguist, and has
invented a good deal of artificial technical vocabulary which is unlikely to
be accepted by speakers accustomed to borrowings from Portuguese (and,
in East Timor since 1976, Indonesian), his second matadalan aims at a
standard phonemic spelling and contains useful information on Tetun-
Terik.
The commitment of Portuguese and Portugal-based Timorese to
timorensia was strengthened rather than weakened by the Republic of
Indonesia’s annexation of the former overseas province. Luís Thomaz
composed in 1981 a second synthetic study, this time on the formation and
rise of the Tetum lingua franca. In a paper of 1985 he also gave an account
of the contemporary position of Portuguese in Indonesian-ruled Timor.
The 1992 edition of the journal Estudos Orientais focused on Timor and
carried among other things an article by Fr Duarte (who had moved to
Portugal in 1969) on Portuguese loanwords in Tetum. Three years later
49
I am informed by Mr. Luís da Costa (de quo infra) that a Portuguese priest, Fr
Augusto Parada, also did lexicographical work (evidently never published) on the
Vaiqueno dialect of Oe-Cusse in the pre-1975 period.
20
came an interesting synthetic work, Timor Timorense, by Artur Marcos,
head of the Centro de Documentação Timor/Ásia at the University of
Lisbon. This book offers reports on much unpublished and out-of-print
Portuguese material on Timor, and includes a general article on the
traditional linguistic situation, a paper speculating on the future of
Portuguese in East Timor, and a collection of Tetum literary texts.
50
Luís da Costa, an East Timorese Tetum scholar now residing in Lisbon
and associated with the Centro de Documentação, is currently preparing
for publication a new Tetum-Portuguese dictionary.
Australian contributions from 1975
Although little scholarly endeavour had been devoted to East Timorese
languages in Australia since Arthur Capell’s three-part contribution of the
war years, constant media attention and public interest in East Timor from
1975 onwards attracted new minds to what has proved to be a rich field of
research.
In 1975, J.R. Landman, a World War II veteran (who had seen active
service in Timor and had maintained social links with the Timorese
community in Melbourne) produced, in collaboration with a fellow ex-
serviceman, Cliff Morris, a short two-way Tetum-English vocabulary. In
the subsequent years, Mr Morris collaborated with Paulo Quintão da Costa
(then residing in Sydney) and his daughter Maria de Oliveira in translating
into English and expanding the 1935 Tetum-Portuguese dictionary of
Canon Mendes and Fr Laranjeira. Although Morris was an amateur with no
formal training in linguistics, the weaknesses of the volume he published
in 1984 were more than compensated for by its usefulness to linguists as
the first substantial dictionary of the Tetum language in English. A small
Tetum-English phrase-book was brought out by Morris eight years later, in
1992.
A great service to researchers and lovers of timorensia was performed
by Kevin Sherlock, a Darwin-based bibliographer, who published in 1980
a thoroughly researched Bibliography of Timor, with sections on
linguistics, oral literature and religious text translations into vernaculars of
East and West Timor. Mr Sherlock has made available numerous difficult-
to-find books and articles, as well as good translations from the Portuguese
of vital information on things Timorese.
The first Australian professional linguist since Capell to take a
scholarly interest in East Timor was Alan Baxter of Melbourne’s Latrobe
University, a specialist in the Creole Portuguese of Malacca, Java (Tugu),
50
“Tópicos para um quadro linguístico dialectal de Timor Leste” (Marcos 1995: 105-
125); “O futuro da língua portuguesa em Timor Leste” (127-140).
21
Macao and other parts of East Asia.
51
While working at the University of
Lisbon’s Centro de Linguística in 1987, Dr Baxter gained access to
Professor Almeida’s recorded language specimens, which included two
speakers of the obsolescent Creole Portuguese of Díli (português de
Bidau). The fruit of his research was a descriptive article on this dialect
which, the author concluded, “is clearly related to both that of Malacca and
that of Macao, but from limited data it is impossible to say which variety it
resembles most.”
52
In analysing Timor Creole Portuguese Baxter consulted
with speakers of Tetum in Melbourne and his work, while only indirectly
concerned with varieties of Austronesian, provided new insights into the
structure of the East Timorese lingua franca.
The present writer (Geoffrey Hull) became interested in timorensia
through his work in Romance and Portuguese studies. While a research
fellow at the Sydney University Language Centre in 1992, he investigated
the structure and vocabulary of Tetum-Praça through interviews of
informants from the local Timorese community. The emerging material
was arranged into an English-medium Tetum language course and
published the following year.
53
Between 1994 and 1996, in response to a
request from Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, the author produced a series of
pedagogical and literary materials in Tetum for the schools of the Diocese
of Dili. The publications of this education project included a guide to the
orthographical standardization of Tetum, an abecedário in the Fataluku
language, and various translations into Tetum. Work was also begun on a
modern and comprehensive Tetum dictionary; and two sociolinguistic
studies (1994, 1996) also date from this period. Since 1997 the present
writer’s research on Timorese languages has been conducted within the
framework of the Linguistic Survey of East Timor project based at the
University of Western Sydney Macarthur. Subsequent works include an
alphabetical guide to standard Tetum (1997) and a comprehensive modern
dictionary of Eastern Tetum currently in preparation.
Other Australian scholars who have devoted themselves to Timorese
linguistics in the 1990s are Anne Wait, who in 1994 submitted to the
Northern Territory University a Master of Education thesis on a
sociolinguistic theme: “Language Maintenance/Language Shift:
Portuguese and Tetum in Darwin, Northern Territory, 1973 to 1993”; and
Catharina van Klinken, a linguistics student at the Australian National
51
See especially Baxter 1988, a grammar of Malaccan Creole (Kristang).
52
Baxter 1990: 28.
53
Geoffrey Hull, Mai Kolia Tetun: A Beginner’s Course in Tetum-Praça, the Lingua
Franca of East Timor, Sydney: Australian Catholic Relief and the Australian Catholic
Social Justice Council, 1993. A second, revised edition of this book appeared in 1996,
together with a set of audio-cassettes with the exercises, reading passages and dialogues
of the course recorded by six native speakers. These tapes were produced by the Sydney
University Language Centre in 1996.
22
University whose doctoral thesis (submitted in August 1997) was an
analysis of the Western Tetum of Wehali in south-eastern West Timor.
The four-volume Comparative Austronesian Dictionary published in
1995 by a group of linguists based mainly at the Australian National
University (Canberra) contained a wordlist and a description of Rotinese.
The Timor-New Guinea link in scientific research
The tantalizing question of the genetic affinities of the identified non-
Austronesian languages of Timor was tackled in 1957 by a Dutch linguist,
H.K.J. Cowan who was the first to recognize the existence of a ‘West
Papuan’ phylum or family of languages centred in the Vogelkop (Bird’s
Head) Peninsula of north-western New Guinea.
54
In this phylum Cowan
included the languages of northern Halmahera and, on structural criteria
alone, also the Timorese ones recognized as non-Austronesian by Capell.
In 1959 the ethnologist Louis Berthe published the first of a string of
works on the oral literature of the Bunak people, his study including a
cursory description of their language. On the question of its identity,
Berthe concluded rather vaguely that Bunak was a mixed language, with
both Austronesian and ‘Papuan’ components, and perhaps related to the
‘Proto-Malay’ (Austro-Asiatic) dialects of Malaya. In a follow-up article of
1963, Berthe analysed the morphosyntactic structure of Bunak.
With this new Bunak data to exploit, Dr Cowan wrote the same year an
article in which he was able to dismiss Berthe’s conclusions as incoherent,
and to confirm the suspected West Papuan affiliations of Bunak (Cowan
1963). In his study, Cowan connected fifteen Bunak lexemes and
morphemes with four coastal languages of the southern Vogelkop
Peninsula: Jahadian, Konda, Kampong Baru and Puragi. Two years later
Cowan’s notice on the Oirata language of southern Kisar appeared in
Lingua. In another offering of 1973, the Dutch linguist expanded his ‘West
Papuan’ theory by confirming that Oirata and Makasai were genetically
related to Bunak. Cowan’s hypothesis that the Timor languages were
related to those of South Vogelkop nevertheless rested on thin foundations:
agreements in a few personal pronouns and no more than 14 apparent
lexical agreements out of the 21 South Vogelkop words studied.
55
Arthur Capell’s study of 1944 had, for lack of data, excluded an
analysis of Fataluku. In 1953 the Portuguese anthropologist Ruy Cinatti
visited Sydney University on his way to Timor, and Capell asked him to
54
These languages are thought to have been brought to New Guinea from the north-west
about 15,000 years ago. The earliest inhabitants of the island, apparently Australoids,
arrived from 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, at a time when New Guinea was still joined to
the Australian continent, see Wurm 1982: 260-1.
55
See the summary of this evidence in Stokhof 1975: 25-6.
23
obtain some information for him on this third Papuan language. While in
Timor, Cinatti had a list of some 500 words and a text translated into
Fataluku and forwarded this material to Capell, along with a copy of
Manuel Ferreira’s 1951 article on Lovaia. On the basis of this information
Capell produced in 1972, many years later, an analytical article including
parallel Fataluku and Lóvaia wordlists. That same year a French scholar,
Henri Campagnolo, published a 24-page article on the Fataluku language.
Campagnolo’s doctoral thesis of 1973 on the Fataluku dialect of Lórehe
was lodged in the Sorbonne Library. The first (intrductory/theoretical) part
of this thesis and was published in Paris in 1979.
The then-accepted (if far from conclusively proved) ‘West Papuan’
character of the Timorese non-Austronesian languages received a major
upset in the mid 1970s, when it became evident to C.L.Voorhoeve, one of
the leading authorities on Papuan linguistics, that the languages of South
Vogelkop (and of the adjacent Bomberai Peninsula to the south) were not
in fact West Papuan, as Cowan had thought, but—despite various evident
West Papuan substratal elements—members of the Trans New Guinea
phylum, the family to which some 70% of Papuan languages had been
found by linguists to belong (Voorhoeve 1975a, 1975b).
56
Even as Voorhoeve was composing his case, Arthur Capell was
beginning to arrive at a similar conclusion, and while in an article of 1975
he tentatively accepted the ‘West Papuan’ classification of the Timor-Alor
languages, he noted that “there seems to be very little in common and a
good deal of difference between the Alor-Timor languages and the others
(i.e. those of northern Halmahera and Vogelkop).”
57
Consequently Capell
proposed that for the time being the Halmahera languages be known as
WPP-1 (=West Papuan Phylum -1) and the Alor-Timor languages as WPP-
2, since “grouping Abui [the only Alor language then known] tentatively
with Makasai, Bunak, Fataluku, Lovaea and Oirata, it is clear that these
languages do not form a coherent group, so that it is really not satisfactory
to group them as though they did, and use the name WPP.”
58
Voorhoeve’s findings of 1975 regarding the Trans-New Guinea phylum
have since found general acceptance, as has W. Stokhof’s contemporary
establishment of genetic links between Fataluku, Oirata, Makasai and
Bunak and the twenty-odd languages of Alor (Ombai) and Pantar (Stokhof
1975), recognized as non-Austronesian three-and-a-half decades earlier by
the Dutch anthropologist Martha Nicolspeyer (1940). In an analysis of 117
compared lexical items, Stokhof found that the Alor languages tended to
56
The existence of a Trans New Guinea phylum was gradually recognized after the
appearance of Joseph Greenberg’s study of 1960, “Indo-Pacific Etymologies.”
57
Capell 1975: 671. The first bearers of Trans-New Guinea speech may have reached
the western shores of the island as early as 9,000 years ago; see Wurm 1982: 264.
58
Capell 1975: 673.
24
agree more often with Makasai than with Bunak, a fact he related to the
local tradition that at least one Alor language, Kolana, had been introduced
from (north-eastern) Timor or Kisar.
59
By the time Professor Stephen Wurm published his 1982 synthetic
study of Papuan languages, the progress of scholarship had allowed him to
conclude that the South Vogelkop and Bomberai languages, though now
reassigned to the Trans-New Guinea phylum, displayed a strong West
Papuan substratum. The corollary of his position was that the ‘Timor-Alor-
Pantar Stock’ languages were similarly bistratic.
60
The real bedevelling factor in learned attempts to solve the problem of
the origins of the non-Austronesian languages of the Timor region was,
and still is, the dearth of data on the likely candidates for kinship among
the vernaculars of West Irian.
61
At the same time, the demonstrable process
of wholesale relexification leading to phylum-switching, and the uncertain
nature of the substratum in the mixed languages of Flores, Savu and Ndao
(studied briefly by Capell in 1976) raises the question of possible
residues—perhaps even in Alor and Timor too—of very early languages
introduced from the Asian mainland and anterior to the migrations of
bearers of West Papuan, Trans-New Guinea and Austronesian speech.
62
Recent work on Timorese members of the Austronesian phylum
Although it might initially appear to be a clear-cut matter, the
classification of the Austronesian languages of Timor is no less complex
than that of the non-Austronesian ones. The region of Eastern Indonesia to
which Timor belongs anthropologically—a zone where the Malay and
Papuan worlds meet and fuse—presents a bewildering degree of linguistic
variety, a phenomenon that impressed and astonished the first European
visitors to the area. It is a daunting task to attempt to establish mutual
relationships and explore genetic connections for these hitherto little-
studied languages, in many respects more dissimilar than similar and for
many of which ‘Austronesian’ is a tentative label rather than an
unambiguous classification.
59
Stokhof 1975: 24.
60
Wurm 1982: 201, 255.
61
Today it has become apparent that the vocabularies of Timor’s non-Austronesian
languages are more closely related—over a very long time-gap—to the languages of the
South Bomberai and Onin Peninsulas (Mor, Tanah Merah and to a lesser extent Iha,
Baham, Karas) than to those of the adjacent South Vogelkop coast.
62
Cautious mention might be made here of Joseph Greenberg’s ‘Indo-Pacific
Hypothesis’ and claims of links between the West Papuan languages and those of the
Andaman Islands (see Wurm 1982: 30, 255, 262).
25
Scholars who have not dealt directly with the challenging complexities
of Timor’s Austronesian varieties generally endorse the assumption that
these languages are very ancient, having been implanted on the island in
the same period (between 2500 and 2000 BC) that nearby Celebes and the
Moluccas were being austronesianized from the Philippines. In his
synthetic work of 1985, Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago,
Peter Bellwood, a historian, made the claim (not textually supported): “it is
apparent from archaeology that Austronesian settlers had reached Timor
well before the end of the third millennium BC”,
63
a position reaffirmed in
linguistics by Robert Blust’s hypothesis of a contemporary ancestral
language from which the 150+ vernaculars forming his ‘Central Malayo-
Polynesian’ subgroup of Austronesian supposedly evolved over this
enormous time-span.
Dr Blust’s hypothesis was first developed in a series of articles
published from 1974 to 1982.
64
The proposed Central Malayo-Polynesian
subgroup (forming with Oceanic and the South Halmahera-West New
Guinea subgroup the wider division of ‘Central-Eastern Malayo-
Polynesian’) consisted of the Austronesian languages of the central and
southern Moluccas, the Sula Archipelago, the north Bomberai Peninsula of
West Irian (Onin, Sekar, Arguini, Bedoanas, Erikwanas) and a small
coastal strip south of Kamrau Bay (Kaiwai), Timor and most of the
surrounding islands, Savu, Sumba, Flores and East Sumbawa (Bima).
Historically, the Blust hypothesis was a development and amplification
of the ‘Ambon-Timor’ group delineated in S.J. Esser’s 1938 article in the
Atlas van Tropisch Nederland,
65
and supported by Isidore Dyen on
lexicostatistical grounds in 1965. Dyen’s ‘Moluccan Linkage’, however,
though encompassing Sumba, Flores, Savu and the South Moluccas,
excluded Timor. The Central Malayo-Polynesian hypothesis has become
widely accepted, but it is still far from perfect formulation, and valid
questions about some of its suppositions have been raised by at least one
specialist in East Indonesian languages.
66
Such historical speculation, interesting and important as it is, seems
nevertheless premature when the languages of Timor and the surrounding
islands have the dubious distinction of being among the least studied in the
world today. An enormous amount of work on data collection, description,
analysis and comparison needs to be done on these vernaculars, and
certainly we cannot hope to have satisfactory answers to the questions that
arise about them until the dense linguistic jungles of the Spice and
63
Bellwood 1985: 125.
64
However, Blust (1982: 247, n. 13) admitted that “The proposed Central Malayo-
Polynesian subgroup has thus far been assumed without qualitative demonstration”.
65
Sheet 9, 9b.
66
On this question, see the last article in the present volume, pp. 167-9.
26
Sandalwood Islands have been fully explored—a task for the twenty-first
century.
27
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PL Pacific Linguistics (Department of Linguistics, Research
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Pusat PPBDPK. Pusat Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Bahasa,
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TITLV Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde.
WPL Working Papers in Linguistics (Honolulu,
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