Portuguese is the official language of the Democratic Republic of East Timor, alongside Tetun Prasa (an Austronesian language and local lingua franca). In this work, I am conducting a study of the Portuguese spoken in East Timor to see if it is possible to identify a developing variety of Portuguese. Further aims are to document and describe the most important linguistic aspects and to develop measures for the valorization of Portuguese within and outside East Timorese society in later phases of the study. To achieve these goals, I use ecolinguistic theory and its various methods of analysis, covering linguistic and extra-linguistic issues, so that it is possible to accurately describe the Portuguese language in Timor by approaching different aspects of the object under study. It is emphasized here that a position of preserving the (possible) diversity of the Portuguese language spoken in East Timor is also an ecological stance, as it aims to preserve the linguistic diversity of the Portuguese language in the world.
