The Waimaha language of East Timor

Waimaha texts

Over the course of the documentation project, our aim is to collect a large number of texts in the Waimaha language, and to annotate them in a number of ways. The most important annotations will be the linguistic glosses: in English, Tetum and Portuguese, with some texts also glossed in Malay. In addition, ethnographic annotations, with notes on any cultural features of significance will be included.

The team has also prepared a number of small books for distribution in East Timorese schools. Copies of each of these can be downloaded from the links below:

* Hire alfabetun ene: an alphabet book with examples of words using all the letters of the Waima'a alphabet.

* Tunu kai-telu: three short folk tales about animals.

* Manu-kumu kai-hitu: the legend of the seven pigeons.

One annotated text (much like the collection being prepared for archiving) is provided on this website. The text is called Bu taha k'omu ruo bu wai-dura or 'The ball of mud and the praying mantis'.

To understand this text it is important to know that East Timor is a country with marked dry and wet seasons, and that much of the annual work activity is structured around the seasonal changes. During the dry season, very little rain falls, and the landscape becomes parched and dry. If the rainy season is late in coming, the effects of this can sometimes be quite disastrous: drought often means that food becomes scarce. It is important to prepare gardens for later planting while the dry season is still in progress. When the rains arrive, seeds need to be planted quickly to ensure that they come to ripeness before the rains stop again. Once the rains do come to East Timor, dried out grasses and plants spring back to life, and newly planted crops start to flourish. Rivers also rise quickly.

Domingos Borges Belo, the narrator of the story. Click on the picture to see video of Domingos telling the complete story, but note that the mpg file is very large: around 35MB in size. This means that the file will take approximately 3 hours to download over a 56kb modem, or 20 minutes if you are on a cable network.

The text below contains a line of 'interlinear glosses' between the Waimaha text and the free English translation. The interlinear glosses give word for word translations of the Waimaha line above. Some of these glosses are abbreviations for grammatical terms and the like; these are listed, with brief explanations underneath the text.