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About Me and My Language
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My name is Joanico Oliveira, I would like to be called Nico. I was born in Timor-Leste and my parents are originally from the Bononaro district. Tetum is the national language of Timor-Leste and most Timorese speak Tetum. However, the lack of academic vocabulary available can make it hard to be used in the schools and formal communication. One way to get around this is by adopting loan-words from Portuguese. |
| Your name |
Joanico Oliveira |
| Contact Email | joanico@hawaii.edu |
| Preferred name(s) of your language | Tetum |
| Alternative names | Tetum Dili |
| Language classification | Austronesian |
| Geographical areas where spoken | South East Aisa, Timor -Leste |
| Approximate number of monolingual speakers | Approximately 50,000 |
| Other languages spoken in the area/country | Portugues, Bahasa Indonesia and English. |
| Official language(s) in your country | Portuguese, Tetum |
| Does your language have a
widely accepted writing system? |
Yes |
| If yes, what materials are
written? |
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| back to top | |
Background of the Language Tetum (also Tetun) is an Astronesia language, a national language and one of the two official languages of Timor-Leste. There are 400.000 speakers in Indonesia (Nusa Tenggara Timur) and 50.000 speakers in East-Timor. The speakers in Indonesia speak different Tetum dialect than speakers in East-Timor. back to top |