Aone van Engelenhoven
Aone van Engelenhoven is Dutch linguist and currently teaching at Leiden University. He conducts research in the field of linguistics and anthropology, with a focus on smaller languages from Indonesia. He has published several papers about languages and traditions of Maluku and Timor-Leste.
He was educated at the University of Leiden, where he graduated from a master's degree in Comparative Linguistics in 1987
Following his PhD on the description of the Leti language in 1995. He started as a lecturer of Austronesian languages in 1993 at Leiden University.
He was born to an Indonesian mother from the Leti Islands, which has helped and inspired his passion for researching languages. He says that some languages are spoken secretly and people can be socially excluded when breaking taboos. He was admitted to the local clan in 1989, giving him a special insight into the culture an learning the songs and stories about his clan. In 2003, after being told the ritual language Makuva isn't spoken anymore, he went to a birthday party, where, after the guest have all become comfortable and drunk started mentioning all kinds of Makuva expressions. After the realization that Makuva continues to exists as a secret language he said that "It had not died, but has fallen into a coma."
In 2007, he accidentally discovered a virtual extinct language called Rusenu language, while studying another endangered language from Timor-Leste called Makuva.
