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.

More recent reforms by the INL include the replacement of the digraphs " nh " and " lh " ( borrowed from Portuguese, where they stand for the phonemes and ) by " ñ " and " ll ", respectively ( as in Spanish ), to avoid confusion with the consonant clusters and, which also occur in Tetum.

In Spanish and some other languages ( Aymara, Quechua, Mapudungún, Guaraní, Basque, Chamorro, Galician, Leonese, Yavapai and Tetum ), whose orthographies have some basis in Spanish, it also represents the palatal nasal.

In East Timor a creolized form, Tetun Dili, is widely spoken fluently as a second language ; without previous contact, Tetum and Tetun Dili are unintelligible.

Portuguese particularly influenced the dialect of Tetum spoken in the capital, Dili, known as Tetun Prasa, as opposed to the more traditional version spoken in rural areas, known as Tetun Terik.

In East Timor, which was an Indonesian province from 1975 to 1999, Indonesian is recognised by the constitution as one of the two working languages ( the other being English ), alongside the official languages of Tetum and Portuguese.

* Tetun-Dili, or Tetun-Prasa ( literally " city ’ s Tetum "), is spoken in the capital, Dili, and its surroundings, in the north of the country.

Tetun-Prasa is the form of Tetum that is spoken throughout East Timor.

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.

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 ".

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 ".

In more traditional forms of Tetum, the circumfix ma ( k )--k is used instead of-na ' in.

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 ).

The sound, which is not indigenous to Tetum but appears in many loanwords from Portuguese and Malay, often changed to in old Tetum and to ( written " 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, and may occur in free variation.

The English spelling " Tetum " is derived from Portuguese, rather than from modern Tetum orthography.

One of the most significant is the Wehali kingdom in central Timor, to which the Tetum, Bunaq and Kemak ethnic groups were aligned.

It is only sung in Portuguese, there is as yet no version in Tetum, the country's national and co-official language.

Some of the names in the regions in which it is consumed are: Vetrilai ( Tamil வ ெ ற ் ற ி ல ை ( vettrilai-வ ெ ற ் ற ( vettr, " variety ") + இல ை ( ilai, “ leaf ”)), Tamalapaku ( Telugu ), Vidyache pan or " Naginiche paan "( Marathi ), veeleyada yele ( Kannada ), Vettila ( Malayalam ), Plū ( Mon ), Malus ( Tetum ), Maluu ( Khmer ), Plū (), Bulath ( Sinhalese ), Malu ( Tokodede ), Bileiy ( Divehi ), bulung samat ( Kapampangan ), daun sirih ( Malaysian ), daun sirih / suruh ( Indonesian ), Papulu ( Chamorro ), Ikmo ( Philippines ), Pu ( ພ ູ) in Lao, and Trầu ( Vietnamese ), Gaweud / Gawed in ( Kalinga ).

An Austronesian language, it is related to such languages as Indonesian, Malay, Fijian, Maori, Hawaiian, Malagasy, Samoan, Tahitian, Chamorro, Tetum, and Paiwan.

) 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 Association of Timorese Heroes ( Tetum: Klibur Oan Timor Asuwain KOTA, Portuguese: Associação dos Heróis Timorenses AHT ) is a conservative political party in East Timor.

* Austronesian: Atayal, Cebuano, Cham, Ilokano, Indonesian, Javanese, Malay, Paiwan, Sundanese, Tagalog, Tetum

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.

When Indonesia occupied East Timor between 1975 and 1999, 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.

Portuguese language | Portuguese ( left ) and Tetum ( right ).

* The standard orthography of the Tetum language ( PDF )

* Pictures from a Portuguese language course, using Tetum, published in the East Timorese newspaper Lia Foun in Díli ( from Wikimedia Commons )

Other smaller parties included Klibur Oan Timur Asuwain or KOTA whose name translated from the Tetum language as ' Sons of the Mountain Warriors ', which sought to create a form of monarchy involving the local liurai, and the Partido Trabalhista or Labour Party, but neither had any significant support.

In 1981 the country's lingua franca the Tetum language, was made an official language of the Catholic liturgy in East Timor, instead of Indonesian.

Fataluku, a Papuan language widely used in the eastern part of the country ( often more so than Tetum ) has official recognition under the constitution, as do other indigenous languages, including: Bekais, Bunak, Dawan, Fataluku, Galoli, Habun, Idalaka, Kawaimina, Kemak, Lovaia, Makalero, Mambai, Tokodede and Wetarese.

* Pictures from a Portuguese language course using Tetum published in the East Timorese newspaper: pt: Lia Foun in Díli

Besides the national official languages of Tetum and Portuguese, most of the inhabitants speak the Papuan language Makasae.

# REDIRECT Tetum language

The people of the occupying country are referred to throughout the book as the malai, similar to ' malae ' the word for foreigner in Tetum, East Timor's national language.

When East Timor gained its independence on 20 May 2002, Tetum and Portuguese were declared as official languages.

* Teach yourself Tetum ... an interview with some information on the history of Tetum

In addition to regional varieties of Tetum in East Timor, there are variations in vocabulary and pronunciation, partly due to Portuguese and Indonesian influence.

* National Institute of Linguistics, National University of East Timor ( Archived ) includes several bilingual Tetum dictionaries, and articles about Tetum

* Suara Timor Lorosae Daily newspaper in Tetum and Indonesian

* East Timor: Tetum, Portuguese

Lyrics of the songs can be sung in Tetum or Portuguese, official languages of East Timor.

Nevertheless, the late Sérgio Vieira de Mello, who headed the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor, was a Brazilian who not only established a close working relationship with Xanana Gusmão ( The country's first President ) as a fellow Portuguese-speaker, but was respected by many East Timorese because of his efforts to learn Tetum.

. tl complies with the ISO 3166-1 standard for the two-letter codes of the name of countries, and can be used as an abbreviation in either of the country's two official languages: Timor Lorosa ' e in Tetum or Timor-Leste in Portuguese.

It originally advocated continued links with Portugal, using the Tetum slogan Mate bandera hum meaning ' In the shadow of the Portuguese flag ', but later formed an alliance with the more left-wing Frente Revolucionaria de Timor Leste Independente ( Fretilin ) to work towards independence in January 1975.