Tetun language

Alright, in Timor-Leste, a generation of children are being left behind by an education system many can't understand.

Portuguese is an official language of instruction, but most students and teachers speak Tetum and local dialects.

With literacy and learning outcomes still low, more Timorese are asking whether it's time to drop the old policy in favour of Tetum, English and Bahasa Indonesia.

Reporter Vanya Vieira travels to Umera Municipality outside the capital, Dili, to ask locals if changing the language of education could mean a brighter future for Timor-Leste.

Every morning, students here at the Insinu Basiku Filial School in Ermera arrive ready to learn.

But for these students, the first challenge is not the lesson.

It's the language.

Timor schools are required to teach in both of the country's official languages, Portuguese and Tetum.

So a lot of work on Tetun, including teaching my current lessons that I'm giving is on interpreting, translation and interpreting.

Well, how do you go using screen readers, voiceover tools with Teton? Is that language available? Because it's not one of the main languages, is it? Not one of the so-called common

languages.

It's not.

So what the vision impaired community here who have access to phones do is they use Indonesian to read Teton.

It sounds a bit like this.

I'll tell you how a sentence using Dutch pronunciation of English.

With your work with linguistics as well at the university, you'd be in the same boat again, wouldn't you, with translation, with managing staff, because you'd be managing staff who have different languages, managing staff.