Makuva

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Makuva

Spoken in

East Timor
speaker 121
Linguistic
classification
  • Makuva
Official status
Other official status in East TimorEast Timor East Timor ( national language )
Language codes
ISO 639 -1

-

ISO 639 -2

paa

ISO 639-3

lva

The largest language groups in the sucos of East Timors.
Proportion of Makuva native speakers in the sucos of East Timors.

Makuva ( Makuwa, Maku'a, Lovaia, Lovaea ) is an East Timorese ethnic group with 121 native speakers who used to live in the village of Lovaia and then have their center in the larger settlement of Mehara , west of Tutuala ( Lautém municipality ). The Makuva were previously resettled from their original home villages of Loikere and Polamanu on the north coast to Lovaia in 1946 . Today the members are scattered across East Timor. 33 live in the municipality of Baucau , 44 in Dili , 13 in Viqueque and only three in the municipality of Lautém. The other Makuva speakers are distributed among the other churches in the country.

language

Makuva is a Malayo-Polynesian language of the Timor branch that is critically endangered. The younger generation mostly speaks the national language Fataluku , which is one of the Papuan languages . In the middle of the 20th century, Makuva was much more widespread in the Lautém community, but it is believed that the original Makuva-speaking population was increasingly assimilated by the Fataluku over time. The Indonesian Operation Donner in 1999 also caused severe upheaval in the region. The villages where Makuva was spoken were destroyed. The population was deported to West Timor or fled to the surrounding caves. Those three Makuva speakers who linguists used as references may not have survived the events of that time.

Conversely, Fataluku has adopted many Austronesian loan words . The Dutch linguist Aone van Engelenhoven sees Makuva less a dying language than a "language in a coma", similar to Latin . Makuva is therefore a ritual language that selected people only learn when they are around 60 years old. She notes that "Lovaia" is preferred as a self-name. “Makuva” is an old Fataluku word that simply means “idiot”. The name was used by Fataluku from the west who did not understand the language of the people in the Tutuala region. As the spokesman for “fata lukunu” (literally “the correct language” or “clear speech”), every other language was automatically incorrect for the people of the West and thus generally not a correct language.

Makuva is similar to the Meher dialect of the nearby Indonesian island of Kisar . The origin of the language is not yet entirely clear. While it is possible that Makuva is an offshoot of the Meher in Timor , some evidence, such as its archaic nature, suggests that it is itself the archetype of the Meher and other related languages ​​between Timor and New Guinea . According to this hypothesis, East Timor would be the springboard for the Austronesation of the eastern region as far as the South Moluccas except Wetar and the Aru Islands .

Makuva is one of the 15 national languages ​​of East Timor recognized in the constitution .

Numbers in Makuva
number Makuva
1 itetlá
2 urua
3 okelo
4th o'aka
5 olima
6th oneme
7th oíko
8th oava
9 osia
10 ideli

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Direcção-Geral de Estatística : Results of the 2015 census , accessed on November 23, 2016.
  2. ↑ Statistical Office of East Timor, results of the 2010 census of the individual sucos ( Memento of January 23, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ a b Andrew McWilliam: Austronesians in linguistic disguise: Fataluku cultural fusion in East Timor ( Memento of the original from November 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 171 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.cultura.gov.tl
  4. ^ John Hajek: Towards a Language History of East Timor ( Memento of December 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) in: Quaderni del Dipartimento di Linguistica - Università di Firenze 10 (2000): pp. 213-227
  5. ↑ Steven Hagers: A forgotten language on East Timor . Kennislink. March 20, 2007. Retrieved October 14, 2012.
  6. ^ Aone van Engelenhoven: Hide and Seek in the Deer's Trap: Language Concealment and Linguistic Camouflage in Timor Leste , p. 7, Leiden University, accessed on May 18, 2020.