THE PROBLEM WITH LANGUAGE IN TIMOR-LESTE

Language is a real difficulty for me in Timor-Leste. There are four languages of importance and I have no idea which one I should be learning. In Oecussi, where I live, there is a smattering of Tetun, Portuguese, Bahasa (Indonesian), and Baikeno. The problem is that a lot of people only speak one of the languages (except Portugese which is always a second language, especially with the older generation). I’m lucky if I could learn one language at a time with ease, let alone four. My Spanish is useful with the few people who speak Portuguese, but that is about it. Tetun at least has a pretty good sprinkling of Portuguese words in it, but this rarely helps me since the local Tetun speakers only adopted words that they hadn’t already invented, which means all the basic words of life are indigenous language based. Baikeno is pretty prevalent with the locals in Oecussi, but is useless in the rest of the country. Also, many of the technicians I work with don’t speak it, they speak Tetun. This is annoying!!!!!

So, I finally decided that I should learn Tetun. ....But that brings about the difficulty of finding a dictionary and a book to facilitate the learning process. They are scarce. The only two that I know of are a Lonely Planet dictionary/language guide and a Peace Corps guide from before they left the country a few years back. There is no chance of getting either while in the country. Maybe a borrowed copy will float my way. Other than that I can just forge ahead and keep looking like an illiterate fool.