Portuguese Creole
:
This article is about the languages. See Creole peoples for the Portuguese Creole ethnic groups.Portuguese creoles are
creole languages which have been significantly influenced by
Portuguese.
Portugal in the period of discoveries and colonization created a linguistic contact with native languages and people of the discovered lands and
pidgins were formed. Until the
18th century, these Portuguese pidgins were used as a
lingua franca in
Asia and
Africa.
Later, the Portuguese pidgins were expanded grammatically and lexically, as they became creole languages. Today, these languages are known as "Portuguese creoles". The Portuguese creoles or Portuguese-based creoles are the ones that have almost all lexical content bases on Portuguese, while grammatically they are very different.
According to the
monogenetic theory of pidgins advanced by
Hugo Schuchardt, many creoles have structural similarities because most of the pidgins and creoles of European base in the world derived from a version of the lingua franca
relexified by the Portuguese. This "broken Portuguese" would be used by European sailors whenever they met new peoples.Items like the preposition
na (meaning "in" and/or "on"; from identical Portuguese word for "in the", feminine singular; contraction of
"em a") would be marks of this common origin. The monogenetic theory does not explain how the
syntactic structure of many creoles could arise from a language that does not possess such a structure.
Origin of the name
The Portuguese word for "creole" is
crioulo, it derives from
criar (to raise) and
olo (house - a typical African house in the Portuguese African colonies). Since most of the African creole speakers had a Portuguese father and an African mother, they were raised (
criados) by their African mother, not as slaves, in the "olos", thus "crioulos", and were servants in the house of their fathers. Thus the creole was left free to develop into a stable language. While the Africans were often deported to the Americas, the mixed raced were not. The African slaves were prohibited from speaking their own languages, which their masters did not understand. Instead, they were also instructed to speak a Portuguese pidgin.
In Portugal and the African Portuguese language countries, the word "crioulo" is often a synonym of "Cape Verdean", where the large majority of the population is mixed raced. The word "crioulo" for the language is only used for the Guinean Portuguese creoles. In these countries the word "crioulo" does not have the same connotation it has in
Brazil.
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Africa's Portuguese creoles: Cape Verdean creoles (1), Kriol of Guinea-Bissau and Senegal (2) and creoles of São Tomé and Príncipe and Equatorial Guinea (3). |
The oldest Portuguese-based creole are the so-called
Crioulos of Upper Guinea, born around the Portuguese settlemens along the northwest coast of Africa. Originally spoken on a wider area, they are presently reduced to the following branches:
*
Upper Guinea Crioulo (Kriol): lingua franca of
Guinea-Bissau, also spoken in
Casamance,
Senegal and in
Gambia.
*
Capeverdean Crioulo (Kriolu, Criol): a
dialect continuum spoken on the islands of
Cape Verde, with some decreolization.
Another group is spoken in the Gulf of Guinea, in
São Tomé and Príncipe and
Equatorial Guinea:
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Angolar (Ngola, N'góla): in coastal areas of
São Tomé Island.
*
Annobonese (Fá d'Ambô): in
Annobón Island.
*
Forro: in São Tomé.
*
Principense (Lunguyê) (almost extinct): in
Príncipe Island.
Many other Portuguese creoles probably existed in Africa, especially in the Congo region and former Portuguese feitorias in the Golf of Guinea.
Portuguese pidgins still exist in
Angola and
Mozambique, uncreolized. A Portuguese pidgin, known as
Simple Portuguese is still used as lingua franca between distinct Angolan tribes.
Portuguese has contributed to many creole languages of the Americas, although its similarity with Spanish makes it difficult to separate the influence of the two languages. Most surviving creoles contain also influences from Dutch, English, French, and various African languages. They are:
*
Papiamento: spoken in
Aruba,
Bonaire and
Curacao; Spanish/Portuguese (60%), Dutch (25%), African and Arawak (15%).
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Saramaccan: spoken in
Suriname; Portuguese, English, African (20%), ...
*
Cafundó: Spoken in southeast
Brazil; Bantu, Portuguese.
Portuguese-based creoles existed in Brazil, for example in the settlements founded by escaped African slaves (
Quilombos); but none has survived. There is a Portuguese dialect in Helvécia, South of
Bahia that presents signs of an earlier decreolization.
Ancient Portuguese creoles originating from Africa are still preserved in the ritual songs of the Afro-Brazilian animist religions (
Candomblé).
It has been conjectured that vernacular of Brazil (not the official and standard
Brazilian Portuguese) resulted from decreolization of a creole based on Portuguese and native languages; but this is not a widely accepted view. Venacular Brazilian Portuguese is continuous with European Portuguese, and in fact quite conservative in some aspects.
There are two French-based Caribbean creole languages spoken in
Brazil, in the state of
Amapá,
Lanc-Patuá and
Karipuna Creole, which were transplanted to the region in the 20th century. They are poorly known, but the Portuguese influence on them is small (chiefly in the vocabulary).
The numerous Portuguese outposts in India and Sri Lanka gave rise to many Portuguese-based creole languages, of which only a few have survived to the present. The largest group were the
Norteiro languages, spoken by the
Norteiro people, the Christian Indo-Portuguese in the North Konkan. Those communities were centered around Baçaim, modern
Vasai, which was then called the "Northern Court of Portuguese India" (in opposition to the "Southern Court" at
Goa). The creole languages spoken in Baçaim, Salsete, Thana, Chevai, Mahim, Tecelaria, Dadar, Parel, Cavel, Bandora (modern
Bandra), Gorai, Morol, Andheri, Versova, Malvan, Manori, Mazagão, and Chaul are now extinct. The only surviving Norteiro creoles are
*
Diu Indo-Portuguese (almost extinct): in
Diu.
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Daman Indo-Portuguese (Língua da Casa): in
Daman.
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Kristi: in
Korlai,
Maharashtra.
These surviving Norteiro creoles have suffered drastic changes in the last decades. Standard Portuguese re-influenced the creole of Daman in the mid-20th century.
The Creoles of the Coast of Coromandel, such as of
Meliapor,
Madras,
Tuticorin,
Cuddalore,
Karikal,
Pondicheri,
Tranquebar,
Manapar, and
Negapatam, were already extinct by the 19th century. Their speakers (mostly the people of mixed Portuguese-Indian ancestry, known locally as Topasses) shifted to
English after the British takeover.
Most of the creoles of the coast of Malabar, namey those of
Cananor,
Tellicherry,
Mahé, Cochin (modern
Kerala), and
Quilom) had become extinct by the 19th century. In Cananor and Tellicherry, some elderly people still spoke some creole in the
1980s. The only creole that is still spoken (by a few Christian families only) is
*
Vaipim Indo-Portuguese: in the
Vaipim Island, near Kerala.
Christians, even in
Calcutta, used Portuguese until
1811. A Portuguese Creole was still spoken in the early 20th century. Portuguese creoles were spoken in
Bengal, such as at
Balasore,
Pipli,
Chandernagore,
Chittagong,
Midnapore and
Hugli.
Finally, a significant Portuguese-based creole flourished among the so-called
Burgher and
Kaffir communities of Sri Lanka:
*
Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese: around
Batticaloa and
Trincomalee (Burgher) and
Puttalam (Kaffir).
In the past, Portuguese creoles were also spoken in
Myanmar and
Bangladesh.
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Southeast Asia Portuguese creoles: Papiá Kristang of Malaysia (1) and Macaista Chapado of Macao, SAR (2). |
The earliest Portuguese creole in the region probably arose in the 16th century in
Malacca,
Malaysia, as well as in the
Moluccas. After the takeover of those places by the Dutch in the 17th century, many creole-speaking slaves were taken to other places in Indonesia and
South Africa, leading to several creoles that survived until recent times:
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Kristang (Cristão): in
Malacca (
Malaysia) and
Singapore.
*
Mardijker (extinct in 19th century): by the
Mardijker people of
Batavia (
Jacarta).
*
Papiá Tugu (extinct in 1978): in
Tugu, Indonesia.
*
Portugis (extinct in around 1950): in the
Ambon and
Ternate islands,
Indonesia*
Bidau Portuguese (extinct in the 1960s): in the
Bidau area of
Dili,
East Timor.
The Malacca creole also had an influence on the creole of
Macao (see below).
The Portuguese were present in the island of
Flores,
Indonesia since the 16th century, mainly in
Larantuka and
Sikka; but the local creole language, if any, has not survived.
Other Portuguese-based creoles were once spoken in
Thailand.
The Portuguese were present in
Macau,
China since the mid-16th century. A Portuguese creole developed there, first by interaction with the local
Cantonese people, and later modified by influx of refugees from the Dutch takeover of Portuguese colonies in Indonesia.
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Macanese (Macaista, Patuá): in
Macau and formely in
Hong-Kong*
Creole language*
Pidgin*
Portuguese language*
Linguistics# Forro was a declaration of freedom of a specific slave used in Portugal and its colonies. These were the most wished documents for the enslaved population.
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The Origins of Negation in the Gulf of Guinea Creoles*
Reconstructing Kriol syllable structures*
The Portuguese language heritage in the East*
The Portuguese Cultural Imprint on Sri Lanka*
Papia, Relijang e Tradisang, The Portuguese Eurasians in Malaysia*
Malacca Portuguese Eurasian Association*
Malacca Portuguese Settlement*
Singapore Eurasian Association Kristang page*
Declaraçon di mundo intêro di Dréto di tudo homi co tudo mudjer Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Kriolu of Santiago
*
Declaraçom Universal di Diritu di Omis Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Kriol
*
Declaraçón Universal di Dirêtu di Hómé Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Forro
*
Dutch Portuguese Colonial History Dutch Portuguese Colonial History
