Michael Kessler – Next month East Timor will become the world's newest nation when the former Portuguese colony, which voted for independence from Indonesia in 1999, formally adopts its first constitution.

But while the document establishes Tetum and Portuguese as the country's official languages and Indonesian Bahasa and English as its working languages, it has failed to resolve a continuing debate about the role of East Timor's colonial languages and the increasing influence of the "global language" of English.

Portuguese was the language of resistance for the present group of political leaders who were active against the Indonesian occupation.

Though Portuguese is only currently spoken by around 10% to 15% of the population (and mainly those over 40), the country's leaders are immersed in it, not least because of their indebtedness to both Portugal and the Portuguese-speaking countries such as Mozambique and Angola for support during the occupation.

Last year concern among this generation of leaders about the spread of English at the expense of Portuguese, was expressed by Ramos Horta, the cabinet member for foreign affairs. He heavily criticised the United Nations mission in Dili for not respecting Portuguese as one of the country's official languages.

According to some, Portuguese also serves other linguistic functions.

An Australian-based academic, Geoffrey Hull, says that the widespread use of Portuguese is essential to the survival of the nation's lingua franca, Tetum.

"Portuguese can serve Tetum because it is not formally very distant from Tetum," he says. "There is a huge Portuguese element in its sound system, grammar and vocabulary, which means Portuguese is not excessively difficult for East Timorese to learn because they already have a partial knowledge of it through speaking Tetum."

The materialistic motives, as Mr Hull puts it, to promote English as an official language would threaten East Timorese culture.

"Linguists often refer to English as a killer, an imperialist language which in world history has a worse record of driving other languages to extinction than any other.

It seems clear that Tetum would be a very inferior and endangered partner in any future cohabitation with English."

Yet there are others, such as Tetum specialist Catharina van Klinken, who do not see Portuguese and Tetum as mutually beneficial.

Ms Van Klinken notes that most of the younger generation of educated Timorese were trained in Indonesian Bahasa but identify with Tetum as their language of resistance.

This is the generation who would much prefer English over Portuguese, she says, who produced a list of electoral vocabulary in Tetum for the United Nations Development Programme.

"Portuguese is held by the educated East Timorese youth to be a problematic language," Ms Van Klinken adds. "Some of their difficulties are linguistic, for instance the fact that it has many verb forms, but a lot of them are social. They say that they just don't have any exposure to it."

Yet Tetum's future as an official language remains in doubt. While it is the language of choice in parliament it is still a language in development.

Its written form is incomplete and experts say that its capacity to function as a strong unifying national language will depend on the level of policy commitment from government.

A Tetum Language Institute has been set up at the University of East Timor and Australian-based linguists are assisting in the development of Tetum grammars and dictionaries.

Yet some analysts remain pessimistic. Helen Hill, senior lecturer in the Sociology of the Asia Pacific Region at Victoria University in Melbourne believes more will be needed.

"My criticism of the language policy is that it's not really practical," she says. "There should be much more discussion about what level people will learn different languages. Policy makers should also be trying to increase the number of interpreters and translators."

Even the Timorese leader, Xanana Gusmao, told Australian radio recently that it would take some 10 to 15 years for Tetum to stand up as the symbolic language of identity.

Ms Van Klinken thinks there's a possibility Portuguese won't work, but nor is she confident that Tetum will succeed either.

"If Portuguese is really pushed as the official language I don't think Tetum will ever make it too. I don't see any practical measure to develop Tetum in five years' time."

Aderito de Jesus Soares is a member of the Fretilin party and lecturer in human rights at the University of East Timor who is widely credited with raising Tetum's status in the constitution. He points out that it is hugely symbolic that Tetum comes before Portuguese in the constitution's wording but adds that it's only a start.

"I think there is a lot to be done. We've got to get reading materials published in Tetum," says de Jesus Soares.

"People have also got to speak and discuss in Tetum. Of course, you still have old leaders who romanticise Portuguese but I think we should speak Tetum in various formal occasions, meetings, seminars, whatever.

"We don't need to be afraid of other languages, we should be open to them but the courage and the spirit to develop Tetum should be there."

The future role of English is also unclear. To some extent its usage as a second language will depend on the success of Portuguese language teaching in the schools and university systems.

Portuguese has already been adopted in years one and two of primary school and the plan is to phase it in in each subsequent school year on an annual basis. Hill does not believe that by relegating English to second-language status East Timor will lose out.

"There's no doubt that English will be a widespread language but it doesn't have to be official to be a significant language," she says.

But this assumption will also depend on which part of the world East Timor is dealing with. The country still counts Indonesia as its biggest trading partner so it's highly likely, according to de Jesus Soares, that Indonesian Bahasa will be the language of commercial transaction between the two countries.

Chris Chrystello, author of East Timor: The Secret Files, spent 25 years reporting on the country. He believes that the adoption of Portuguese will have strategic consequences: "It will make the new country less dependent on Australia and Indonesia, no matter how relevant these two countries will be for East Timor's survival."