Macanese language
| Macanese Patois | |
|---|---|
| Patuá | |
| Native to | Macau |
| Ethnicity | 5,000 (2007; in Macau?) |
|
Native speakers
|
50 in Macau (2007) perhaps hundreds or more than a thousand among the Macanese diaspora; virtually all speakers at least bilingual. |
|
Portuguese Creole
|
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | maca1262 |
| Linguasphere | 51-AAC-ai |
Macanese Patois (known as Patuá to its speakers) is a Portuguese-based creole language with a substrate from Malay, Cantonese, also Sinhalese, which was originally spoken by the Macanese community of the Portuguese colony of Macau. It is now spoken by a few families in Macau and in the Macanese diaspora.
On February 20, 2009, the new edition of UNESCO’s Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger classified Patua as a "critically endangered" language. The Atlas puts the number of Patua speakers at 50 as of the year 2000. It underwent decreolization and a shift to Standard Portuguese while Macau was still under Portuguese administration.
The language is also called by its speakers Papia Cristam di Macau ("Christian speech of Macau"), and has been nicknamed Dóci Língu di Macau ("Sweet Language of Macau") and Doci Papiaçam ("sweet speech") by poets. In Portuguese it is called Macaense, Macaista Chapado ("pure Macanese"), or Patuá (from French patois).
Patuá arose in Macau after the territory was "gradually occupied by Portugal after the mid-16th century" [according to the preamble to Macau Basic Law] and became a major hub of the Portuguese naval, commercial, and religious activities in East Asia.
The language developed first mainly among the descendants of Portuguese settlers. These often married women from Portuguese Malacca, Portuguese India and Portuguese Ceylon rather than from neighboring China, so the language had strong Malay and Sinhalese influence from the beginning. In the 17th century it was further influenced by the influx of immigrants from other Portuguese colonies in Asia, especially from Portuguese Malacca, Indonesia, and Portuguese Ceylon, that had been displaced by the Dutch expansion in the East Indies, and Japanese Christian refugees.
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