This website contains some basic informations about Fataluku language, one of the languages in East Timor. East Timor is a new nation that gained independent in May 2002. It is located between Indonesia and North Australia. For map of East Timor, please click here.

Some brief informations about Fataluku:
1. Classification: Papuan language group.
2. Spoken in: the eastern part of East Timor in the Lospalos District, Tutuala, Lautem as well as the nearby Kisar Island (this island is part of Indonesia)
3. Number of speaker: in East Timor, it is estimated that as much as 30,000 to 40,000 people speak the language which equal to around 5% of the population of the country. East Timor population recently, is estimated to be a little less than 1 million people.
4. Other languages in East Timor: Kemak, Makassae, Galoli, and Tetun. These are local languages that were officially recognized by the constitution of East Timor with Tetun as the national language. Other languages spoken include Portuguese, Indonesian and English.

For this website, I upload a small vocabulary of body parts for the first lesson. Hopefully in the near future, I can input more vocabularies with various themes and a simple sintax. You can click each word to hear the pronunciation of the word. Go to word list.
Author information:
I am one of the student that participate in the activities held by the Language Documentation Center in the University of Hawaii at Manoa. My name is Rosalyn and I am a student at the department of Urban and Regional Planning. This Spring 2005 is my second semester here. The reason I am interested in documenting the language has a profesional as well as personal nuances:
1. I am interested in indigenous issues in my study and I am very convinced that protecting a language is very important in preserving the cultural identity of indigenous or traditional people. This cultural identity is a tremendous asset to the World and that way I am also preserving the world diversity (we do not want the world to be all uniform, right?? That would bore you to death :P  ) 
2. As for the personal reason, I get involve in the project to learn the language itself. I am not a speaker and initially, I can only mention less than 10 words of Fataluku. However, since my husband is a native speaker of Fataluku and his parents use the language as their means of communication, I figure out that I need to at least able to say hello in the language too.
So, here I am. I also want to mention my greatest appreciation to the individuals in the Language Documentation Center in University of Hawaii at Manoa that provide us a chance to learn how to document languages. Thanks Valerie, Ryoko, Karen, and all. I am really glad I participate in this program.
Last but not least, I hope who's ever view this site would be able to get a basic grip of Fataluku language. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact me at rosalyn2[at]hawaii[dot]edu.