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rfmcdonaldAlthough the recent coup attempt in East Timor, the East Timorese government was not decapitated and Ramos-Horta survived his shooting, the whole episode underlines the fragility of the East Timorese state. Some of the press coverage has explored how East Timor is caught between Indonesia and Australia, as the two countries' security, economic, and political concerns in East Timor lead to their deeper engagement with the island state. This makes it all the most interesting how energetically the East Timorese government has been promoting Portuguese as the national language, not the Bahasa Indonesia or English of these neighbours.
Portuguese is a major world language and the Lusophone world comprises more than two hundred million people, two trillion dollars worth of GDP and just under ten millions of square kilometers of land area, but the language and the world are both overwhelmingly concentrated in the Atlantic world, in Portugal, in Brazil, in an increasingly Lusophone Angola, and in the island groups (Sao Tome e Principe, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde) dispersed in the Atlantic Ocean between these three countries, with Mozambique being the major outlier. East of Mozambique, in the Indian Ocean basin that Portugal once dominated in the 16th century, the Portuguese language has signally failed to entrench itself as a language of wider communication, and the Portuguese communities on the Indian Ocean have dwindled. Even in the Indian state of Goa, Portuguese until 1961, the language and heritage of Portugal seem to be mainly of folkloric and touristic importance. The Bahasa Indonesia of East Timor's most recent colonizer and the English of East Timor's patron are much more important in East Timor's neighbourhood.
Despite all this, East Timor still became the eighth member of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, the Lusophone equivalent of the Organisation de la Francophonie, and has since worked energetically to promote knowledge of Portuguese among the younger generations of East Timorese, who had been kept by the Indonesian occupation from picking the language up from their elders. (This 2002 Associated Press article describes how the East Timorese government recruited Portuguese teachers intensive education program in the Portuguese language.) Why? Geoffrey Hull in a 2000 piece for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation ("Portuguese in East Timor", argued that Portuguese was a natural choice because it was deeply implanted in East Timorese culture by more than three centuries of Portuguese presence. This line is backed up by Andrea K. Molnar, who argues that Portuguese gives East Timor a special place in a wider universe of Lusophone countries, decisively separating East Timor from a formerly hegemonic Indonesia. All this is true, but as The New York Times observed in 2007, the selection of Portuguese has imposed significant costs on East Timor.
Despite intensive efforts, it doesn't seem as if enough East Timorese are fluent in Portuguese to avoid serious problems at every levels of society, from the government bureaucracies which work (supposedly) in Portuguese people to the villagers whose education is hindered by the requirement that they learn a language they have no familiarity with and no access to on a day-to-day basis. East Timor may yet become as Lusophone as the other seven members of the CPLP, but there are going to be plenty of speedbumps on the way.
Portuguese is a major world language and the Lusophone world comprises more than two hundred million people, two trillion dollars worth of GDP and just under ten millions of square kilometers of land area, but the language and the world are both overwhelmingly concentrated in the Atlantic world, in Portugal, in Brazil, in an increasingly Lusophone Angola, and in the island groups (Sao Tome e Principe, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde) dispersed in the Atlantic Ocean between these three countries, with Mozambique being the major outlier. East of Mozambique, in the Indian Ocean basin that Portugal once dominated in the 16th century, the Portuguese language has signally failed to entrench itself as a language of wider communication, and the Portuguese communities on the Indian Ocean have dwindled. Even in the Indian state of Goa, Portuguese until 1961, the language and heritage of Portugal seem to be mainly of folkloric and touristic importance. The Bahasa Indonesia of East Timor's most recent colonizer and the English of East Timor's patron are much more important in East Timor's neighbourhood.
Despite all this, East Timor still became the eighth member of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, the Lusophone equivalent of the Organisation de la Francophonie, and has since worked energetically to promote knowledge of Portuguese among the younger generations of East Timorese, who had been kept by the Indonesian occupation from picking the language up from their elders. (This 2002 Associated Press article describes how the East Timorese government recruited Portuguese teachers intensive education program in the Portuguese language.) Why? Geoffrey Hull in a 2000 piece for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation ("Portuguese in East Timor", argued that Portuguese was a natural choice because it was deeply implanted in East Timorese culture by more than three centuries of Portuguese presence. This line is backed up by Andrea K. Molnar, who argues that Portuguese gives East Timor a special place in a wider universe of Lusophone countries, decisively separating East Timor from a formerly hegemonic Indonesia. All this is true, but as The New York Times observed in 2007, the selection of Portuguese has imposed significant costs on East Timor.
The rumble of a generator and the whir of ceiling fans muffled the quiet words of a judge as he questioned a witness in a murder trial here one recent hot, still afternoon.
But even if they could have heard him, most of the people sprinkled through the little courtroom, including the defendant and the witnesses, could not have understood what he was saying.
The judge was speaking in Portuguese, the newly designated language of the courts, the schools and the government--a language that most people in East Timor cannot speak.
The most widely spoken languages in this former Portuguese colony are Tetum, the dominant local language, and Indonesian, the language of East Timor’s giant neighbor.
For a quarter of a century, Portuguese had been a dying tongue, spoken only by an older generation. It was banned after Indonesia annexed the territory in 1975 and imposed its own language.
In a disorienting reverse, a new Constitution re-imposed Portuguese after East Timor became independent in 2002. The marginalized became mainstream again, and the mainstream was marginalized.
Linguistic convenience was sacrificed to politics and sentiment. In a nation that had never governed itself and had few cultural symbols to unite it, this language of resistance to the Indonesian occupiers was an emblem--particularly to the older generation--of freedom and national identity.
Despite intensive efforts, it doesn't seem as if enough East Timorese are fluent in Portuguese to avoid serious problems at every levels of society, from the government bureaucracies which work (supposedly) in Portuguese people to the villagers whose education is hindered by the requirement that they learn a language they have no familiarity with and no access to on a day-to-day basis. East Timor may yet become as Lusophone as the other seven members of the CPLP, but there are going to be plenty of speedbumps on the way.
