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Article published In:
Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages
Vol. 33:2 (2018) ► pp.247–279

Malacca Creole Portuguese in the 19th century

Evidence of a wider lectal range?

| Universidade Federal da Bahia

Earlier linguistic research suggested that Malacca Creole Portuguese (MCP) had existed without diglossia with Portuguese ever since the Dutch conquest of Portuguese Malacca in 1642, yet it had experienced some contact with Portuguese in the 19th and 20th centuries. The present study adds significantly to this discussion. It considers a range of information from sociohistorical studies and archival sources (including linguistic data) relating to the Dutch (1642–1795, 1818–1823) and early British (1795–1818, 1823–1884) colonial periods. For the Dutch period, it is seen that contact with other Creole Portuguese communities is likely to have persisted for some time. Most significant, however, is the finding that 19th century texts in Portuguese and creole Portuguese, recently identified in archival sources in London and Graz, show that Portuguese continued to be part of the Malacca sociolinguistic setting until the early British period, and that missionary Indo-Portuguese also had a presence at that time. It is concluded that, rather than presenting a narrow lectal range akin to that of the MCP community in the late 20th century, the creole lectal grid in the 19th century was more complex, and included dimensions of a continuum in a diglossic relationship with Portuguese.

Keywords: Malacca Creole Portuguese, historical sociolinguistics, early diglossia, continuum, lectal grid
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background – Pieces of the puzzle
  • 3.Archival sources
  • 4.Framework
  • 5.The Malacca Portuguese community during the Dutch period
  • 6.A window on the early 19th century
    • 6.1Public notices
    • 6.2Bills for services rendered
    • 6.3Personal, unformulaic correspondence
  • 7.Missionary activities in Malacca in the early 19th century
  • 8.MCP in the 19th century
  • 9.Portuguese and Creole Portuguese in early 19th century Malacca
    • 9.1The socio-demographic context of the creole community
  • 10.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
  • Archival sources
Published online: 19 October 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.00016.bax
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