page_title: Timor
section_title: Language, ethnic groups and religion
hierarchical_section_title: Timor / Language, ethnic groups and religion
caption_attribution_description: English: Languages of Timor Island as of 2006 (English) Deutsch: Die Sprachen Timors 2006 gezeichnet von J. Patrick Fischer (Englische)
context_page_description: Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, north of the Timor Sea. The island is divided between the sovereign states of East Timor on the eastern part and Indonesia on the western part. The Indonesian part, also known as West Timor, constitutes part of the province of East Nusa Tenggara. Within West Timor lies an exclave of East Timor called Oecusse District. The island covers an area of 30,777 square kilometres. The name is a variant of timur, Malay for "east"; it is so called because it lies at the eastern end of the Lesser Sunda Islands. Mainland Australia is less than 500 km away, separated by the mentioned Timor Sea.
context_section_description: Anthropologists identify eleven distinct ethno-linguistic groups in Timor. The largest are the Atoni of western Timor, and the Tetum of central and eastern Timor. Most indigenous Timorese languages belong to the Timor–Babar branch of the Austronesian languages spoken throughout the Indonesian archipelago. Although lexical evidence is lacking, the non-Austronesian languages of Timor are thought to be related to languages spoken on Halmahera and in Western New Guinea. Some are so mixed it is difficult to tell which family they descend from.
  The official languages of East Timor are Tetum and Portuguese, while in West Timor it is Indonesian. Indonesian is also widely spoken and understood in East Timor.
  Christianity is the dominant religion throughout the island of Timor, at about 90% of the population, but unequally distributed as West Timor is 58% Protestant and 37% Catholic, and East Timor is 98% Catholic and 1% Protestant. Islam and animism make up most of the remainder at about 5% each across the island.
caption: Language map of Timor
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