Tetemelayu

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The national language of Tanah Burung. Tetemelayu draws on elements of RL Indonesian and Tetum. There are no tenses or verb variations, making the language an easy one to learn. Since Tanah Burung has hundreds of complex indigenous languages and dialects, the simplicity of Tetemelayu made it natural choice for nationalists seeking for an alternative to the colonial language, Dutch.

Tetemelayu is based on root words with the addition of prefixes and suffixes to alter the part of speech and modifiers to express concepts such as past and future. This allows tremendous linguistic economy: where English has tens of thousands of words, Tetemelayu can get by with about 5,000 words and their modifiers. Thus:

makan 
eat (root word)
memakan 
to eat, dine (formal form)
dimakan 
to be eaten (passive voice)
makanan 
food
pemakan 
the person who eats
pemakanan 
dining
rumah makan 
restaurant (lit. eating house)
sudah makan 
already eaten (past tense)
sedang makan 
in the process of eating (present tense)
akan makan 
will eat (future tense)


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