Cochin Indo-Portuguese
Vypin Indo-Portuguese
Native toIndia
RegionKochi
Extinct20 August 2010, with the death of William Rozario[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3–
Glottologmala1544  Malabar–Sri Lanka Portuguese
ELPMalabar Indo-Portuguese Creole

Cochin Indo-Portuguese, also known as Vypin Indo-Portuguese from its geographic centre, is an Indo-Portuguese creole spoken on the Malabar coast of India, particularly in Fort Cochin, in the state of Kerala. The last fluent speaker, William Rozario, died in 2010. It is now spoken only by a few Christian families on Vypeen Island (Vypin Island) and other areas of Kochi, though not fluently.

History

Cochin Indo-Portuguese, known locally as "Portuguese" or "Cochin Portuguese", formed from contact between Portuguese, Malayalam and other languages spoken in old Cochin.[1] Cochin was one of the first contact languages to spring up from European contact in Asia, and it became the mother tongue of part of the local Catholic community in the 15th to 19th centuries. It emerged from Catholic Indo-Portuguese households in Malabar, and it became sufficiently established that it continued under German occupation in the 17th century. Speakers started shifting away from the language around the turn of the 19th century. The last native speaker, William Rozario, died on 20 August 2010 in Vypeen.[1] Some in Cochin still understand it to a degree.

Examples

Numbers in Cochin Portuguese
Creole Standard Portuguese English
umma um one
dōs dois two
thrēs três three
kāthru quatro four
sinkku cinco five
sēys seis six
sēthi sete seven
oythu oito eight
nōvi nove nine
dēs dez ten

Portuguese and Malayalam Influence

Both Portuguese and Malayalam have had significant influences in Malabar Indo-Portuguese. The verb tæ, for example, borrows its semantic context from other Portuguese verbs, namely from the verbs ter (have) and estar (be). Conversely, the verb's morphosyntactic and semantic constructions were influenced greatly by Malayalam.[2]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Cardoso, Hugo (30 October 2010). "The Death of an Indian-born Language". Open Magazine.
  2. ↑ Krajinović, Ana (26 November 2019). "Existence, location, possession, and copula in Malabar Indo-Portuguese". Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics. 6 (1): 27–57. doi:10.1515/jsall-2019-2007. S2CID 208252700. ProQuest 2317022289.
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