Portuguese Language in the Empire
As they moved along the West African coast, the Portuguese realized that Arabic was not understood by the peoples they came across and that other languages were spoken by the natives of the lands they discovered.
One of the most important agents in spreading the knowledge of Portuguese in those distant countries was the church, whose missionary work of conversion requires the use of language not only for communication on ordinary affairs but also for the purpose of religious instruction.
At the same time, many of the religious orders were committed to the study of native languages, and it was their work that produced the first grammar books of these languages.
When Diogo Cão discovered the Kongo, the Portuguese captain decided to take some of the Africans back to Portugal with him. Since the Africans were noblemen in their own society, they were presented at the court and instructed in the Portuguese language and matters of faith. One year later, when the Kongolese were returned, the King of Kongo was delighted and asked for further help of Portugal.
By training in the Portuguese language a few people from the communities they had encountered, the invaders established the necessary channels for communication.
From the fifteenth century, in the wake of the navigations, the Portuguese language was spoken in wider and wider areas of the navigations, and was a means of communication with diverse peoples in Asia, Africa, and America.
In India, Portugal promoted effectively a policy of mixed marriages, and those communities used the Portuguese language and favored its expansion.
In Goa and other areas, the administration used the Portuguese language, which became obligatory for everyone. Schools where set up to teach the Portuguese.
After the military intervention, the second factor explaining the expansion of the Portuguese language was trade
When Afonso de Albuquerque captured Malacca, he opened up the doors to Portuguese merchants and encouraged the development of an extensive network that was supported by Portuguese–speaking peoples stationed on the Asian rim of the Pacific Ocean.
For three hundred years, Portuguese was the vehicle of communication.
It was usually a language grammatically simplified, or a creole, which would be the basis of all creoles still in existence or that have already disappeared in that part of the world.
A third factor in the expansion of the Portuguese language was missionary work.
In 1600, an English merchant, who met a Japonese Lord, , was able to make himself understood in Portuguese.
Between 1602 and 1633, the Dutch took Portuguese interpreters aboard their ships.
In 1646 and 1656, the Kings of Ceylon used the Portuguese language in their communication with the Dutch.
The Indo-Portuguese creole languages in Asia were the creole of Malacca, spoken in western Malaysia.The creole of Macao, which was no longer spoken after 1800; and the creole of Sri Lanka (Ceylon)
The creoles spoken in India ( Chaul, Cannanore, Tellicherry, Cochin) began to lose their importance only by the end of the nineteenth century.
The Portuguese language was the first instrument of communication between the Japan and the West.
Other foreigners were used obliged to use it in their relations with the Japanese.
The Portuguese missionaries brought into Japan a press with movable metallic characters, which was used to spread knowledge of the Japanese language.
Father João Rodrigues was the author of the first grammar of the Japanese language,“Arte da Ligoa de Iapan” which is consulted to this day by Japanese experts who want to know the history of their language.
We owe to the Portuguese Jesuits the transcription of the Japanese into the Roman alphabet.
There are many borrowings in Portuguese from other Oriental languages besides Japanese.In spite of the differences, the first contacts between the Christian Portuguese and Hinduism were favored by certain cultural ambiguities. Catholicism had a figurative art that could be made to correspond in the Indian imagination with representations of the Hindu religion. This gave the Portuguese an advantage over the Dutch, whose Calvinism was less congenial to the character of the Oriental faith.
The resistence or persistence of the Portuguese language over 300 years owes much to such factors.
That the Portuguese were the first in the region also gave their language an advantage.
The economic supremacy of Great Britain supplanted its use in trade relations with the adoption of the English. By 1800, the Portuguese language was spoken only in the territories under Portuguese administration in India, China and Timor. The situation has changed, although there were pockets, where the Portuguese survived in reduced form.
The Marquis de Pombal was not only a great reformer of education, but also a man of vision regarding the choice of a national language in Brazil.
The complex linguistic mosaic of the country was made more difficult by the African languages spoken by the slaves.
The Marquis de Pombal changed this situation radically.In a directive of 1757, he made Portuguese the official language in the Amerindian settlements of Pará and Maranhão.
Boys and girls attending school, and natives capable of instruction, where not allowed to use the language of their nations.
By a royal letter of January 15, 1754, the difference between the natives and whites had been abolished,, and a writ of April 4, 1755, had established that the Amerindians could marry whites.
The writ of May 8, 1758, confirmed that the Amerindians were were the masters of their freedom and their property. Any natives who had a knowledge of the Portuguese language and the necessary qualifications could have access to a post in public administration.
This was one of the most remarkable acts of Pombal administration.
Gradually, the Portuguese language gained ground. The Portuguese spread widely with a rich variety of linguistic invention that revealed the strands of Brazilian society and the composition of its identity.
Excerpts from:
Source : "Linguage and literature in the Portuguese Empire"
Luis de Sousa Rebelo,King´s College London