Mambai

The Mambai are the second largest people of East Timor after the Tetun, occupying the mountainous center of Timor. Their language belongs to the Timoric branch of the Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian family. The Portuguese knew them as the Maubere, after Mau Bere, a common male name among them, and the word long served as a collective label for the island's inland peoples.

Mambai farmers grow maize, rice and root crops in the highlands and traditionally live in circular houses with conical thatched roofs. Mambae was once spoken around the bay of Dili, but after the Portuguese made Dili the capital of Portuguese Timor in 1769 the urban Tetun dialect spread there, and the Tetun of Dili carries a strong Mambai substrate.