Wetarese is an Austronesian language of Wetar, an island in the south Maluku, Indonesia, and of the nearby islands Liran and Atauro, the latter island separate from the mainland of East Timor, north of Dili.

Background

The four identified principal varieties of Wetarese on Wetar – Aputai, Iliʼuun, Parai and Tugun – are distinct enough that some may consider them to be different languages. Half of Wetarese speakers live on the island of Atauro in East Timor, where three closely related dialects (presumably of Iliuun) are spoken: 'Rahesuk' (''Rasua'') in the center, 'Resuk' (''Hresuk'') in the southeast, and 'Adabe' (''Raklungu'') in the southwest. ''Dadua'' in the extreme north is a subdialect of Rahesuk, and has been reported to be intelligible with the Iliuun of Liran Island. About half the Dadua population has moved to Timor, on the coast of

Manatuto district Manatuto (, ) is one of the municipalities (formerly districts) of East Timor, located in the central part of the country. It has a population of 45,541 (Census 2010) and an area of 1,783.3 km². The capital of the municipality is also n ...

, where it has undergone influence from Galoli. Wetarese is closely related to

Galoli The Galoli, or Galolen, are a people of East Timor with a population of about 50,000, primarily along the northern coast of the district of Manatuto. To the west lies the Mambai people. There is an old colony on the southern coast of Wetar islan ...

, spoken on the north coast of

East Timor East Timor (), also known as Timor-Leste (), officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is an island country in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the exclave of Oecusse on the island's north-w ...

and by an immigrant community on the south coast of Wetar.

"language"

The Raklungu dialect of Atauro, or ''Kluun Hahan Adabe'', was mistaken for a Papuan language by Antonio de Almeida (1966) and reported as "Adabe" in Wurm & Hattori (1981). Many subsequent sources propagated this error, showing a Papuan language on Atauro Island.''Ethnologue'' (2013), for example, shows "Adabe" being spoken on central Atauro, in the area of Raklungu, and lists the population of all three dialects of Atauro Wetarese as being Papuan Adabe. Geoffrey Hull, director of research for the ''Instituto Nacional de Linguística'' in East Timor, describes only Wetarese being spoken on Ataúro Island, and was unable to find any evidence of a non-Austronesian language there.

Phonology

The following represents the Tugun dialect:

Consonants

* /v/ may also be heard as in free variation. * /r/ is mainly heard as in word-final position or in slower speech, it is heard as �elsewhere. * /ʔ/ only occurs in word-medial positions.

Vowels

* Sounds /e u/ are also heard as � ʊ

Citations

References

External links

Survey of languages of East Timor
Timor–Babar languages Languages of East Timor Languages of the Maluku Islands {{indonesia-stub