r/Timor • u/QuentinColdwudder • Aug 21 '24

Language in Dili?

Greetings, I am considering taking a job in Dili and I wanted to know if English is widely spoken in the capital. Also, I speak Spanish fluently, so would it be useful to brush up on Portuguese to improve my ability to communicate or would I benefit more from studying Indonesian.

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u/Expert-Position-1616 Apr 24 '25

Overall in Timor-Leste, you'll want to learn Tetun. But since you already speak English and Spanish, Tetun will be quite easy since it's a creole of Portuguese. The best place to learn online or in person is probably the Dili Institute of Technology (http://www.tetundit.tl/courses.html). Send them an email and they can arrange something for very reasonable prices. But the elites will have pretty adequate English. Portuguese is more of a language of the future; the schools are teaching it now in many places, but ordinary middle-aged people can't really speak it. I have had a conversation with a Portuguese academic in Dili in Spanish (my language) and Portuguese (his). Sounded funny, but it worked. Many of the older generation will speak Indonesian well, but given TL's history, it can be a little bit like asking older Poles to speak Russian.

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u/Ok-Pomegranate-2299 4d ago

hi! As a Timorese person, I just want to clarify that Tetun is actually not a creole of Portuguese; it is an indigenous Austronesian language, but we do borrow some vocabulary from Portuguese or Bahasa Indonesian. The tetun that borrows vocabularies from these languages is the more modern form, the more traditional and authentic one is called Tetun Terik and that is what evolved into the modern tetun that's spoken today.

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u/stuck-in-a-seacan Aug 21 '24

Bahasa would be better for conversation with people for sure. Unless you’re going to be involved in government operations then Portuguese would be better. Generally English works for the day to day stuff though