Two official languages, two working languages and around thirty mother tongues on an island you can drive across in a day.
Why this channel
What you will learn here
Language explains the country's history, its regions and its politics — and a visitor with ten words of Tetun is treated differently.
Four short filmed conversations with the people who know this subject first-hand are being produced for this page by Stays of Timor. Each is two to three minutes — honest, local, and recorded in Timor-Leste.
The interviews
Four conversations, four angles
🎥Interview coming soon
Interview 1Why so many languages on one small island
Austronesian and Papuan families, mountains, and thirty-odd mother tongues.
🎥Interview coming soon
Interview 2Tetun: the language that united a country
How a trade language became a national one, and how it keeps changing.
🎥Interview coming soon
Interview 3Portuguese, Indonesian, English — the policy argument
Four languages in schools and offices, and what it costs children.
🎥Interview coming soon
Interview 4Languages with few speakers left
Documentation, mother-tongue schooling and what disappears with a language.
In pictures
Culture & Belief
Sacred house, highlandsCeremony in traditional dressTebe Fatuk circleVillage life, Ataúro
Photos: Ministry of Tourism & Environment, Timor-Leste
Part of the Timor Information Channels — 28 subjects, told by the people who know them. Produced by Stays of Timor.
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