Timoric

The Timoric languages are a branch of the Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian group of Austronesian, spoken on Timor, neighboring Wetar and, in most classifications, southwest Maluku. They include Uab Meto of west Timor, Tetun and Mambai of the east, and Helong around Kupang. Long contact with Papuan languages has left these tongues with unusual phonology and many borrowed words.

Timor entered regional trade as a source of sandalwood, noted as Ti-wu in the Chinese Zhu Fan Zhi of the 1200s and listed among Majapahit's realms in the Nagarakretagama of the 1300s.

The Portuguese settled in eastern Timor in the late 1500s and the Dutch East India Company took Kupang in the mid-1600s. Their rivalry over sandalwood made Tetun, spread by coastal commerce and Catholic missions, the island's main lingua franca.