Indo-Portuguese creoles

Last updated

Indo-Portuguese Creole
Native to India, Sri Lanka
Native speakers
5,000 (2006) [1]
Portuguese Creole
  • Indo-Portuguese Creole
Language codes
ISO 639-3 idb
Glottolog indo1327
indo1318   bookkeeping code with extensive bibliography

Indo-Portuguese creoles are the several Portuguese creoles spoken in the erstwhile Portuguese Indian settlements, Cochin Portuguese Creole, Fort Bassein, Goa and Damaon, Portuguese Ceylon etc; in present-day India and Sri Lanka. These creoles are now mostly extinct or endangered. They have substantial European Portuguese words in their grammars or lexicons:

The expression Indo-Portuguese may refer not only to the creoles but also to the creole people groups of Luso-Indians and Portuguese Burghers, who spoke them on the Indian subcontinent.

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Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese, Ceylonese Portuguese Creole or Sri Lankan Portuguese Creole (SLPC) is a language spoken in Sri Lanka. While the predominant languages of the island are Sinhala and Tamil, the interaction of the Portuguese and the Sri Lankans led to the evolution of a new language, Sri Lanka Portuguese Creole (SLPC), which flourished as a lingua franca on the island for over 350 years (16th to mid-19th centuries). SLPC continues to be spoken by an unknown number of Sri Lankans, estimated to be extremely small.

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Luso-Asians are Eurasian people whose ethnicity is partially or wholly Portuguese and ancestrally are based in or hail primarily from Portugal, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. They historically came under the cultural and multi-ethnic sway of the Portuguese Empire in the East and retain certain aspects of the Portuguese language, Roman Catholic faith, and Latin cultural practices, including internal and external architecture, art, and cuisine that reflect this contact. The term Luso comes from the Roman empire's province of Lusitania, which roughly corresponds to modern Portugal.

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The Indo-Portuguese Creole of Bombay was a creole language based on Portuguese, which grew out of the long contact between the Portuguese and local languages such as Konkani, Marathi & Gujarati. Currently this language is extinct. It was spoken in Bombay (Mumbai), India: Which broadly includes Bassein (Vasai), Salsette, Taana (Trombay), Chevai, Mahim, Tecelaria, Dadar, Parel, Cavel, Bandora-Badra, Govai, Marol, Andheri, Versova, Malvan, Manori, Mazagaon. This language was, after the Ceylon creole dialect of Indo-Portuguese, the most important. In 1906 there were still close to 5,000 people who spoke Portuguese creole as their mother tongue, 2,000 in Mumbai and Mahim, 1000 in Bandora, 500 in Thana, 100 in Curla (Kurla), 50 in Bassein (Vasai) and 1,000 in other towns. There were, at that time, schools that taught the creole and the rich classes, which were replaced by the English language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Portuguese language in Goa</span> Overview about the Portuguese language in Goa

The Portuguese controlled Goa until 1961, when India took over. Only a very small fraction of Goans speak Portuguese nowadays. Although an essential religious language, there were 1,500 students learning Portuguese in Goa in 2015; totaling a number of 10,000 – 12,000 Portuguese speakers in the state.

Malabar – Sri Lanka Portuguese is a Glottolog classification that includes:

References

  1. Indo-Portuguese Creole at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)