Galoli language

Galoli
Galolen
Native to	East Timor
Region	Manatuto District
Native speakers	11,000[1] (2010 census)[2]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian (MP) Nuclear MP (Central–Eastern) Timor–Babar Wetar–Galoli Galoli
Dialects	Talur
Language codes
ISO 639-3	gal
Glottolog	galo1243[3]
Distribution of Galoli mother tongue-speakers in East Timor. Galoli is also spoken on the south coast of Wetar Island in Indonesia, just off the top of the map.

The Galoli, or Galolen, are a people of East Timor with a population of about 50,000, primarily along the northern coast of the district of Manatuto. To the west lies the Mambai people. There is an old colony on the southern coast of Wetar island, the Talo, who speak the Talur dialect.

Their language is also known as Galoli, is one of the Timor–Babar group of Austronesian languages. It is one of the national languages designated by the constitution of East Timor. Because the area was used as a trading center for different cultures, there are a large number of foreign loan words in the vocabulary, principally from Moluccan and Malay languages. Although it is not spoken by as many people as other national languages, it was adopted by the Roman Catholic Church in the district of Manatuto and thus has become fixed in grammars and dictionaries.

References

1. Excluding 3,150 Dadu'a speakers per the census
2. Galoli at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
3. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Galoli". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.