Aone van Engelenhoven (born 1962) is a Dutch linguist and anthropologist^[1] who teaches at Leiden University. He conducts research in the field of linguistics and anthropology, with a focus on smaller languages from Indonesia. He has carried out extensive research about languages and traditions of Maluku and East Timor.^[2]

He was educated at the University of Leiden, where he graduated with a master's degree in comparative linguistics in 1987.^[3] He wrote a PhD dissertation on the description of the Leti language in 1995.^[4] He started as a lecturer of Austronesian languages in 1993 at Leiden University.

Van Engelenhoven was born to an Indonesian mother from the Leti Islands.^{[citation needed]} He was admitted to a local clan in 1989, giving him a special insight into the culture and allowing him to learn the clan's songs and stories.^{[citation needed]}

In 2007, he accidentally discovered a virtually extinct language called Rusenu while studying another endangered language from East Timor called Makuva.^[5]

Publications

• Concealment, Maintenance and Renaissance: language and ethnicity in the Moluccan community in the Netherlands (2002)
• Leti, a language of Southwest Maluku (2004)
• The position of Makuva among the Austronesian languages of East Timor and Southwest Maluku (2009)
• Searching the Invariant: Semiotactic Explorations into Meaning (2011) ISBN 978-3862880362^[6]
• The Spoor of the Mythical Sailfish (2013)