Symbols
69Click a symbol to copy it and open its page.
Alphabet
One row per letter in Tetum dictionary order, with the accented forms beside their plain letter. LL comes after L and is written as two l's; C, Q, W and Y are not part of the standard alphabet and appear only in foreign words and names.
Punctuation
The apostrophe marks the glottal stop (ha'u, di'ak, Lorosa'e); the hyphen joins compounds and possessives (ai-han, ha'u-nia).
Currency
Timor-Leste uses the US dollar; its own centavo coins are worth the same as US cents.
Where it's spoken
Timor-Leste, where Tetum is an official language, and West Timor in Indonesia (the related Tetun Belu and Fehan varieties).
Timor in emoji
The crocodile the island of Timor is said to be, the rising sun of Lorosa'e, Timorese coffee and the woven tais cloth.
On the map
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The Tetum alphabet: the letters of standard Tetun
Tetum, which its speakers call Tetun, is written in the Latin alphabet. The standard spelling set by Timor-Leste's National Institute of Linguistics (Instituto Nacional de Linguística) in 2004 uses these letters, in dictionary order: A B D E F G H I J K L M N Ñ O P R S T U V W X Z; LL and RR are loanword digraphs, while W occurs in some regional or Tetun-Terik-derived forms. That is fewer than English: C, Q and Y are outside standard Tetun spellings. Where Portuguese writes c or qu, Tetum writes k or s, so Portuguese polícia becomes Tetum polísia.
Ñ ñ and the LL ll digraph adapt Portuguese nh and lh in loanwords. Unicode has no separate letter for ll, so it is simply typed as two l's, the way Spanish writes it. X stands for the 'sh' sound and J for the 'zh' sound of Portuguese loans, which is why Portuguese chefe (chief) is written xefe.
Tetum accents: what á é í ó ú do
Most Tetum words are stressed on the second-to-last syllable, and they need no accent. When the stress falls somewhere else, the stressed vowel gets an acute accent: Timór, nasionál, polísia, kafé (coffee). Many of these are Portuguese loanwords, whose stress Tetum keeps. The acute is the only accent mark standard Tetun puts on vowels: it marks irregular (non-penultimate) stress; there is no grave, circumflex or vowel tilde, so the ã and ç of Portuguese are respelled, and Portuguese informação becomes Tetum informasaun.
In everyday messages many people leave the accents off, and Tetum written in Dili mixes the standard spelling with older Portuguese-style habits. Dictionaries and learners' materials mark them, and they are what a learner needs to say a word correctly; in practice their use varies from writer to writer.
The glottal-stop apostrophe in ha'u, di'ak and Lorosa'e
Tetum has a glottal stop, the catch in the throat in the middle of English 'uh-oh', and it changes meaning, so it is written with an apostrophe: ha'u (I, me), di'ak (good), la'o (walk) and Lorosa'e, the rising sun, which gives the country its Tetum name Timór Lorosa'e. Either the straight apostrophe ' or the curly ’ is used; word processors turn the first into the second automatically, and both are read the same.
Tetum also uses the hyphen a lot, for compound nouns such as ai-han (food) and ai-funan (flower) and in possessives such as ha'u-nia (my) and ita-nia (your). Quotation marks are written “like this”. Prices are in US dollars, the currency of Timor-Leste, so you write and, for the country's own centavo coins, .
How to type Tetum letters on Windows, Mac and phone
On Windows, hold Alt and type on the number pad: á Alt0225, é Alt0233, í Alt0237, ó Alt0243, ú Alt0250, ñ Alt0241; capitals Á Alt0193, É Alt0201, Í Alt0205, Ó Alt0211, Ú Alt0218, Ñ Alt0209; the curly apostrophe ’ is Alt0146. With the US-International layout, type ' then the vowel for á é í ó ú and then n for ñ; for a plain apostrophe before a vowel, as in ha'u, type ' then the space bar first.
On a Mac, press OptionE then the vowel for the acute, and OptionN then n for ñ; hold Shift on the second key for the capital. On Android and iPhone, hold down a vowel or n and slide to the accented letter; keyboards set to Portuguese or Spanish offer all of them. In HTML the entities are á, é, í, ó, ú and ñ.
Where the Tetum language is spoken: Timor-Leste and West Timor
Tetum is one of the two official languages of Timor-Leste , alongside Portuguese, and the language most Timorese share whatever their first language is. CLDR estimates about 890,000 speakers; the number who use it every day is higher, because it is also the second language of many Timorese and the common language of the capital Dili, of schools, radio and church. The standard form is based on Tetun Prasa or Tetun Dili, the market Tetum of the capital, which took in many Portuguese words.
An older, more conservative variety, Tetun Terik, is spoken along the south coast of Timor-Leste; the closely related Tetun Belu (with the Fehan variety) is spoken in the central border area and in West Timor, Indonesia . Tetum is an Austronesian language, distantly related to Indonesian and Malay; its Portuguese vocabulary is the legacy of more than four centuries of Portuguese rule. The Timor-Leste, Portuguese and Indonesian collections have their own characters.
How to use them
5 situationsClick to copyTetum Alphabet & Letters combos
11Worth knowing
- The Tetum name of the country, Timór Lorosa'e, means 'Timor of the rising sun': loro is the sun and sa'e means to rise, while loro-monu, the sun falling, means the west.
- In Tetun Dili (Tetun-Prasa), verbs do not inflect for person or tense: ha'u la'o (I walk) and nia la'o (he or she walks) use the same verb form, while time and aspect can be expressed with separate markers such as ona (already).
- Thank you in Tetun uses the Portuguese-derived forms obrigadu and obrigada: some speakers choose by the speaker's gender, while many choose by the addressee's gender.
- Standard Tetun adapts Portuguese loans to Tetun spelling: C, Q and Y are outside its standard inventory, while W occurs in some regional or Tetun-Terik-derived forms. Kafé and polísia are Tetun spellings of Portuguese café and polícia.
Questions people ask
6What is the Tetum alphabet?
The standard Tetun alphabet uses the Latin letters A B D E F G H I J K L M N Ñ O P R S T U V W X Z; LL and RR are loanword digraphs, while W occurs in some regional or Tetun-Terik-derived forms. Vowels can take an acute accent (á é í ó ú) to mark non-penultimate stress; the apostrophe marks the glottal stop. C, Q and Y are outside standard Tetun spellings.
Tetun or Tetum?
Both are names for the same language. Tetun is the name in the language itself and the usual form in Timor-Leste and in linguistics; Tetum comes from the Portuguese spelling and is common in English.
What does the apostrophe mean in Tetum words like ha'u?
It marks a glottal stop, a short catch in the throat between the vowels. It is part of the spelling and can change meaning, so ha'u (I) must keep it.
How to type ñ?
On Windows hold Alt and type 0241 on the number pad (Ñ is 0209); on a Mac press OptionN then n; on a phone hold n and pick ñ; in HTML write ñ. With US-International, type then n.
What country speaks the Tetum language?
Timor-Leste, where it is an official language with Portuguese and the common language of Dili. Related varieties, Tetun Belu and Fehan, are spoken in West Timor in Indonesia.
Is Tetum similar to Portuguese?
Tetum is an Austronesian language, not a Romance one, so its grammar is very different, but Tetun Prasa has taken in many Portuguese words, such as bondia, obrigadu and kafé, respelled with Tetum letters.
