Helong language

Helong (alternate names Helon, Kupang and Semau[1]) is a Central Malayo-Polynesian language of West Timor.

The Endangered Languages Project has classified Helong as "vulnerable", based on the most recent data from 1997.

[4] In recent years, the people in Kupang have spoken a local dialect of Malay, resulting in Helong being largely forgotten by those who visit the capital city often.

While the new language has left behind a lot of the region's history, experts believe that Helong speakers contain a vast wealth of knowledge around the past, specifically, the spreading of Atoni culture when the Dutch gave them weapons, which wiped out many of the other cultures that existed in West Timor, but leaving Helong traditions and culture widely intact.

While Helong does not use the full 26-character ISO basic Latin alphabet, but contains 27 characters total, which can be seen in the Phonology section below.

[2][6] The palatal stops /c, ɟ/ and the voiced labio-velar approximant /w/ are marginal phonemes, only occurring in a few loanwords.

[6] ketang kaa to is a Helong idiom that translates directly as 'cockatoos eating seeds', which they use as a saying to describe way too many of a specific item.