Welaun (also known as Bekais or Wekais) is an Austronesian language spoken on the border of East Timor and West Timor (a part of Indonesia). It is closely related to Tetun.Hull, Geoffrey. 1998. "The basic lexical affinities of Timor's Austronesian languages: a preliminary investigation." Studies in Languages and Cultures of East Timor 1:97-202.
Previous studies Welaun was documented by Hull (2003)Hull, Geoffrey. 2003. Lia-Bekais nia Fatin iha Dalen-Lubun Tim´or. Studies in Languages and Cultures of East Timor 5:55–78. (In Tetun Dili.) and Edwards (2019). Edwards (2019) estimates a speaker population of 5,575.Edwards, Owen (2019). Reintroducing Welaun. Oceanic Linguistics, Volume 58, Number 1, June 2019, pp. 31-58. A dictionary of Welaun has been written by da Silva (2012).da Silva, Eng. Guilherme 'Puru-Berliku'. 2012. Disionáriu Wekais-Tetun. Dili: Secretaria de Estado da Cultura.
Phonology + 13 consonants Labial Alveolar Velar Glottal Nasal Plosive Fricative Approximant Trill
It has five vowels:
References