ABSTRACT
Patterns of language maintenance and survival over time in East Timor are closely linked to the country’s complex historico-political circumstances. At least three very different historical phases – political and linguistic – can be identified: each new one in turn radically shorter and more overwhelming than its predecessor, and each with very different linguistic consequences:
Portuguese contact and colonisation (1500s-1975)
Indonesian occupation (1975–1999)
Post-Referendum/Independence (1999-)
