Rusenu is a virtually extinct

Papuan language The Papuan languages are the non-Austronesian and non- Australian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands, by around 4 million people. It is a strictly geogra ...

discovered in 2007. It was spoken in the east of what is now

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-we ...

. Rusenu was discovered accidentally by the Dutch-Timorese linguist

Aone van Engelenhoven Aone van Engelenhoven (born 1962) is a Dutch linguist and anthropologist who teaches at Leiden University. He conducts research in the field of linguistics and anthropology, with a focus on smaller languages from Indonesia. He has carried out ex ...

, who was studying a language called

Makuva Makuva, also known as Maku'a or Lóvaia, is an apparently extinct Austronesian language spoken at the northeast tip of East Timor near the town of Tutuala. Makuva has been heavily influenced by neighboring East Timorese Papuan languages, to ...

, thought since the 1950s to be extinct. Just as he was about to leave for the Netherlands, he was informed about the existence of a language called Rusenu. There was said to be only one elderly woman "who had some knowledge of it." He gave his tape recorder to his informant, who subsequently interrogated the women and her son. She remembered a nursery rhyme, which she was unable to interpret (as was her entire tribe). Her son could count to ten in the language. After Van Engelenhoven analysed and transcribed the recording, he concluded that Rusenu, "albeit remotely related to

Fataluku Fataluku (also known as Dagaga, Dagoda', Dagada) is a Papuan language spoken by approximately 37,000 people of Fataluku ethnicity in the eastern areas of East Timor, especially around Lospalos. It is a member of the Timor-Alor-Pantar language fam ...

, is a separate language." The speakers of Rusenu were also claimed to have been responsible for the several thousand years old rock drawings on East Timor, in the

Ile Kére Kére caves Ile may refer to: * iLe, a Puerto Rican singer * Ile District (disambiguation), multiple places * Ilé-Ifẹ̀, an ancient Yoruba city in south-western Nigeria * Interlingue (ISO 639:ile), a planned language * Isoleucine, an amino acid * Another ...

. Van Engelenhoven reports this discovery triggered rumors about other languages that have survived to date as cants, and hopes to discover some more unknown East Timorese languages in the near future.

References

Languages of East Timor Oirata–Makasai languages Extinct languages of Asia {{TNG-lang-stub