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Helong
Helong
Native to	Indonesia
Region	West Timor
Native speakers	(14,000 cited 1997)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian (MP) Nuclear MP (Central–Eastern) Timor–Babar West Timor Helong; ; ; ; ; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	heg
Glottolog	helo1243

Helong

Location of the Helong Language in blue (Western Tip)

Helong (alternate names Helon, Kupang and Semau^[2]) is a Central Malayo-Polynesian language of West Timor. Speakers are interspersed with those of Amarasi. This language has become endangered as a result of its native speakers marrying those who do not speak Helong, and as a result of coming in contact with the outside community.[1]^[3] Helong speakers are found in four villages on the South-Western coast of West Timor, as well as on Semau Island, a small island just off the coast of West Timor.^[4]The mostly Christian, slightly patriarchal society of Semau do there best to send their children away to Bali (or elsewhere) to earn money to send home.

Classification

Helong is an Austronesian language, a group of languages spoken in Polynesia, an area north of Australia. Helong belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian branch of Austronesian languages, placing it among languages totaling over 385 million speakers^[5] Helong shares its repetition of words in other words like dua~dua (english: pair) with the nuclear Malayo-Polynesian languages. Some languages in this family include Hawaiian, Samoan, Tahitian, and Fijian. The Endangered Languages Project has classified Helong as "vulnerable", based on the most recent data from 1997.^[6] The largest threat to Helong is a dialect of Malay spoken in Kupang, called Kupang Malay, as the native Helong speakers often visit Kupang, and use that dialect when there.^[4]

History

Helong was once the primary language spoken in Kupang, the capital of Indonesia located on the western tip of Timor. It was spoken by the Raja, or monarch, of Indonesia. It us unknown when exactly the Raja stopped using Helong to speak, but the language has since fallen out of popularity, now used sparsely around Kupang, but mostly used on Semau Island just off the coast of Kupang.^[7] In recent years, the people in Kupang have spoken a local dialect of Malay, resulting in Helong being largely forgotten by those who visit the capital city often. While the new language has left behind a lot of the region's history, experts believe that Helong speakers contain a vast wealth of knowledge around the past, specifically the spreading of Atoni culture when the Dutch gave them weapons, which wiped out many of the other cultures that existed in West Timor, but leaving Helong traditions and culture widely intact.^[8]

Grammar

Morphology^[4]

Helong word structure follows a standard C(C)V(C)V(C) word structure. Additionally, there is always a consonant at the beginning of every non-clitic word. Ignoring suffixes, the last consonant in any word can only be a few things, the glottal or apical consonants found in the table in the Phonology section, with the exception of the letter d, which does not satisfy this rule. On the contrary, there are no such limits on the last vowel of a word, which can be any of the five.

Syntax^[9]^[4]

Helong follows a VSO word order like the other languages closely related to it. Helong is similar to languages like Spanish when it comes to noun-adjective order. The noun will come before the adjective describing it in a sentence. For example, ana hmunan directly translates as "child first", but refers to somebody's first child. However, unlike in Spanish, punctuation will only come at the end of a sentence. Like most languages, the first word of each sentence, as well as proper nouns are capitalized.^[9] Helong uses negative modifiers to change the meaning of a sentence to the opposite. For example, "... parsai lo" means "do not believe", with parsai being a word meaning believe, and lo being a negative modifier.^[9]

Vocabulary

Helong takes many loanwords, stems, suffixes, and prefixes from Malay, most of which are monosyllabic, but can be bisyllabic as well. Helong does have its own idioms and sayings, and a majority of its vocabulary is original, taking stems from similar languages like Malay. There are not words for each specific relative on either side, just words like baki (uncle) describing rough relation, with the name of the individual being necessary to determine the exact relative.

Writing System

Helong uses the same Latin script used in the majority of languages around the world. While Helong does not use the full 26 character ISO basic Latin alphabet, but contains 27 characters total, which can be seen in the Phonology section below. ^[9]^[4] While most of Helong words are written in the same format as English words, one key difference is that when using modifiers such as plurals, distributive numerals, and frequencies, Helong uses Hyphens or Tildes to to connect the base word to the modifier.^[9]

For example, in the sentence "Tode-s dua~dua le halin nahi-s deken", tode means lay, so tode-s would refer to laying multiple things, as the -s indicates plurality. Dua is the number two, so dua~dua would translate to the English "pair"

Phonology

Vowels^[4]^[9]
a	e	i	o	u

These vowels are identical to those in the English language, including the pronunciation.

Consonants^[4]^[9]
	Labials		Apicals		Laminals		Dorsals		Glottals
Stops	p	b	t	d	c	j	k	g	ʔ	‘
Nasals	m		n		ɲ		ŋ
Fricatives	f		s						h
Laterals and Trills			l	r
Semivocals	w				j	y

Numbers

Numbers 1-30
mesa	1	hngul esa	11	buk dua beas esa or buk dua-s esa	21
dua	2	hngul dua	12	buk dua beas dua or buk dua-s dua	22
tilu	3	hngul tilu	13	buk dua beas tilu or buk dua-s tilu	23
aat	4	hngul aat	14	buk dua beas aat or buk dua-s aat	24
lima	5	hngul lima	15	buk dua beas lima or buk dua-s lima	25
eneng	6	hngul eneng	16	buk dua beas eneng or buk dua-s eneng	26
itu	7	hngul itu	17	buk dua beas itu or buk dua-s itu	27
palu	8	hngul palu	18	buk dua beas palu or buk dua-s palu	28
sipa	9	hngul sipa	19	buk dua beas sipa or buk dua-s sipa	29
hngulu	10	buk dua	20	buk tilu	30

The Helong language uses words for each base unit (ie. tens, hundreds, thousands). For example, the number 27 could be said as "tens two ones seven", indicating a 2 in the tens column and a 7 in the ones column.^[9]

Base Units
beas	ones
buk	tens
ngatus	hundreds
lihu	thousands
juta	millions

Ordinal numbers, with the exception of the word for first, simply add ke in front of the word for the number. Researchers have been unable to determine if ke is its own word, a prefix, or a proclitic.^[9]

Ordinals
hmunan	First	ke eneng	Sixth
ke dua	Second	ke itu	Seventh
ke tilu	Third	ke palu	Eighth
ke aat	Fourth	ke sipa	Ninth
ke lima	Fifth	ke hngulu	Tenth

Non-Numeric Quantity

Non-Numeric Quantity
mamo, mamamo	many
toang, totang	all
hut, hutu	many (crowded)
mamo kose	plenty (many lots)
mamo tene	plenty (many big)
mamo naseke	too much (many excessive)
nuli	entire (complete)
ketang kaa to	way too many
ase	none, nothing
sii	alone, by yourself
mesa-mesa	each

'ketang kaa to' is a Helong idiom that translates directly as "cockatoos eating seeds", which they use as a saying to describe way too many of a specific item.^[9]

References

^ Helong at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
^ Lewis, Paul M; et al. (2014). Ethnologue: Languages of Asia, 17th Edition. Texas: Sil International, Global Publishing. pp. 163, 454. ISBN 978-1-55-671370-5. {{cite book}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |first= (help)
^ "Helong". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2017-02-10.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Steinhauer, Hein. Synchronic Metathesis and Apocope in Three Austronesian Languages of the Timor Area. Thesis. Leiden University, 1996. Retrieved 2017-3-7.
^ "Malayo-Polynesian languages". Wikipedia. 2017-04-11.
^ "Did you know Helong is vulnerable?". Endangered Languages. Retrieved 2017-03-08.
^ Bowden, John Metathesis in Helong 2010. Presentation. Accessed 2017-04-26
^ Fox, James T. (2003). "Out of the Ashes". press.anu.edu.au. Retrieved 2017-04-26.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j Klamer, Marian; et al. (2014). Number and quantity in East Nusantara. Asia-Pacific Linguistics, College of Asia and the Pacific. Retrieved 2017-03-02