Abstract
The East Timorese linguistic repertoire is complex. It comprises Tetum and Portuguese (now both official languages in East Timor), Bahasa Indonesia and other local national languages. Moreover, different generations have different degrees of knowledge and use of these languages due to historical changes and resulting language policies in East Timor. In this article, we analyze multilingualism in the East Timorese community in Portugal using sociolinguistic questionnaires on language use, choice and attitudes. The result of our analysis shows that the East Timorese multilingual repertoire is re-shaped in the immigrant context in the following way: Tetum is the only East Timorese national language which is maintained and functions as an East Timorese identity marker. Informants have a positive attitude towards Portuguese, clearly identifying it as a High language. Furthermore, Bahasa Indonesia is still maintained to a certain degree in some domains.
Highlights
The independence of East Timor in 2002 marked a change in the country’s linguistic ecology
The introduction of Portuguese was not met with enthusiasm, especially by young East Timorese, who had been educated in Bahasa Indonesia and felt that in this way they were being excluded from the project of nationbuilding
Portuguese and Tetum are the new co-official languages, Bahasa Indonesia is still widely used in East Timor and it is clearly still used by the two youngest groups of informants
Summary
The independence of East Timor in 2002 marked a change in the country’s linguistic ecology. East Timor reintroduced Portuguese as an official language, 74 ellipsis 10 together with Tetum, one of the local languages and a widely used lingua franca. Even though the official figures are not realistic, statistics do show a steep increase of East Timorese immigration; between 2006 and 2010, the East Timorese population increased by 56.8%, with the highest increase observed in university cities like Braga, Coimbra and Évora This signals that a new wave of immigration, more mobile, voluntary, mainly composed of educated East Timorese, is arriving in Portugal for training purposes under the agreements between the Portuguese universities and the East Timorese government. Issues of language maintenance and use/choice in the immigrant context are strictly linked to what is going on in terms of language planning in East Timor and in other East Timorese diasporic communities in the world. Our study aims to assess the extent to which the multilingual repertoire of each age group is reproduced in the immigrant context and the ways in which it is re-shaped and re-constructed in the new linguistic ecology and reflects the two brand-new identities: 1) the one of the country of origin (newly independent with a new language policy) and 2) the one of being an immigrant, whether temporarily or permanently, in the host country
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