Macanese patois (), also called Maquista, is a Portuguese-based creole language with a substrate from Cantonese, Malay and Sinhala, 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.

UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger classifies Patua as a "Critically Endangered" and places the number of speakers at 50 .

Because of its historical development, it is closely related to other Portuguese- and Malay-influenced creoles of Southeast Asia, notably the Kristang language of Malacca and the extinct Portuguese-influenced creoles of Indonesia and Flores, as well as to the Indo-Portuguese creoles of Sri Lanka and India.

Name The language is also called by its speakers as ("Christian speech of Macau") and has been nicknamed ("sweet language of Macau") and ("sweet speech") by poets.

In Chinese, it is called "" ("Macanese language") or "土生土語" ("native-born dialect/patois"). In Portuguese, it is called , ("pure Macanese"), or (from French ).

The term "" ("Macanese speak") in Chinese, the lingua franca of Macau, refers to any language of Macau (such as the Tanka dialect of Yue Chinese, Standard Cantonese with Macau unique phrases and expressions, Macanese, Portuguese with Macau accent, Hakka, etc.) and the Macanese language, respectively. Although there have been attempts by the Portuguese Macau government in the mid-1990s to redefine the Portuguese and English term "" as Macau Permanent Resident (anyone born in Macau regardless of ethnicity, language, religion or nationality), in accordance with the Chinese (Cantonese) usage, this did not succeed. Consequently, the Portuguese and English term "" refers neither to the indigenous people of Macau (Tanka people) nor to the demonym of Macau, but to a distinctive ethnicity (1.2% of the population) special to Macau.

History

Origins

Patuá arose in Macau after the territory was leased by Portugal in the mid-16th century 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 neighbouring China, so the language had strong Malay and Sinhala 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.

Evolution Like any other language, Macanese underwent extensive changes in usage, grammar, syntax, and vocabulary over the centuries, in response to changes in Macau's demographics and cultural contacts. Some linguists see a sharp distinction between the "archaic" Macanese, spoken until the early 19th century, and the "modern" form that was strongly influenced by Cantonese. The modern version arose in the late 19th century, when Macanese men began marrying Tanka women from Macau and its hinterland in the Pearl River delta. The British rule of Hong Kong from the mid-19th century also added many English words to the lexicon.

Over its history the language also acquired elements from several other Indian tongues and a string of other European and Asian languages. These varied influences made Macanese a unique "cocktail" of European and Asian languages.

Macanese lawyer and Patuá supporter Miguel Senna Fernandes has said that Patuá was "not yet dead, but the archaic form of Patuá has already died", adding that "modern" Patuá could be considered a "dialect derived from archaic Patuá." He also underlined the fact that "modern" Patuá has been strongly influenced by Cantonese, namely since the beginning of the 20th century, adding that it was "quite a miracle" that Patuá has been able to survive for four centuries in Macau, considering that "Chinese culture is quite absorbing."

"Let's revive an almost lost memory," Fernandes said about efforts by Patuá aficionados to ensure the survival of Macau's "sweet language" that, after all, is part of its unique history.

Cultural importance

The language played an important role in Macau's social and commercial development between the 16th and 19th centuries, when it was the main language of communication among Macau's Eurasian residents. However, even during that period the total number of speakers was relatively small, probably always amounting to just thousands, not tens of thousands of people.

Macanese continued to be spoken as the mother tongue of several thousand of people, in Macau, Hong Kong and elsewhere, through 19th and early 20th century. At that time, Macanese speakers were consciously using the language in opposition to the standard Portuguese of the metropolitan administration. In the early 20th century, for example, it was the vehicle of satirical sketches poking fun at Portuguese authorities. A few writers, such as the late poet José dos Santos Ferreira ("Adé"), chose the "sweet language" as their creative medium.

On the other hand, Macanese never enjoyed any official status, and was never formally taught in Macau. Starting in the late 19th century, its role in the life of the colony was greatly diminished by the central government's drive to establish standard Portuguese throughout its territories. High-society Macanese gradually stopped using it in the early 20th century, because of its perceived "low class" status as a "primitive Portuguese". All people, including many Chinese learning Portuguese as their second or third language, are required to learn standard European Portuguese. Other Macanese people learn Cantonese, another language with co-official status with Portuguese in Macau. Because of this, code switching even occurs between the Creole, standard Portuguese, and Cantonese in informal speech.

Present status Macanese use was already in decline while Macau was a Portuguese territory, and that situation is unlikely to improve now that the territory is under Chinese administration. Still, its speakers take great pride in the fact that Macau has its own local language, something that Hong Kong does not have. They argue that Macau's unique status as a 500-year-old bridge between Orient and the Occident justifies deliberate efforts to preserve the Macanese language. The language is included in UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.

In spite of its unique character and centuries-old history, Macanese has received scant attention from linguists. Philologist Graciete Nogueira Batalha (1925–1992) published a number of papers on the language. A Macanese-Portuguese glossary was published in 2001.

In the 21st century, some younger Macanese are making efforts to rejuvenate Patuá, especially by using it in original music and drama.

Modern Macanese Modern Macanese differs rather greatly from Macanese spoken during and before the first half of the 20th Century. The modern variety can be said to have taken its shape after the 1950s, with Macanese literature of the time still more or less recognizable today. In addition to strong influences from Cantonese, Portuguese has re-asserted its influence to a degree, both in vocabulary and in phonology.

Older words borrowed from Malay or South Asian sources may be supplanted by Portuguese words. For example, sezâ ("sun") from Marathi () appears to have become all but archaic even in the later half of the 20th century, replaced by the Portuguese . Other such words may take on extended meanings, such as sapeca, from Malay + (lit. "one coin thread"), which formerly only meant "coin", but is now the most common word meaning "money".

In other cases, Macanese has undergone a certain degree of decreolization, with Portuguese-derived words losing their extended meanings; for example , from Portuguese ("now"), formerly also had the senses of "at the same time" and "since", however modern Macanese almost exclusively uses the word simply to mean "now". In other cases of decreolization, a word derived from a Portuguese regional variant may be discarded in favour of the modern standard Portuguese word, such as replacing older jinela, meaning "window".

Increasingly, ⟨m⟩ before a consonant is also simply pronounced rather than as , despite ⟨m⟩ being a nasalizing consonant in Portuguese. For example, empê ("to stand up"), from Portuguese , is more likely to be pronounced or rather than or . ⟨n⟩ before a consonant however generally remains nasalized as , with the exception of most Cantonese loanwords. It has also been found that in the consonant clusters ⟨nd⟩, ⟨nj⟩, ⟨nt⟩, and ⟨nz⟩ where ⟨z⟩ is pronounced , the pronunciation of ⟨n⟩ also becomes , for example úndi ("where") being pronounced rather than , or tanto ("much") being pronounced or rather than . Older dictionaries, such as the Glossário Do Dialecto Macaense (1988), generally record pre-consonant ⟨m⟩ with nasalization, such as notating ambá as [ą̃bą́] rather than say [ąmbą́], despite ambá (modern ambâ or ambâc) deriving from English humbug where is not nasalized.

In addition to lexical contributions, Cantonese has also significantly influenced the grammar of modern Macanese; one example is the common usage of (lit. "to go") before verbs, which parallels the Cantonese usage of , which in addition to "to go" can also mean "to go in order to do something".

Younger Macanese (under the age of 60), who may be less fluent in Macanese and more fluent in Cantonese, may even write full sentences using outright Cantonese syntax. For example, the sentence ("He says that tomorrow he will go to Hotel Lisboa to gamble") may be translated word-for-word into/from Cantonese as , with the exact same syntax. In addition, de-diphthongized words may sometimes be re-diphthongized in alignment with the Portuguese origin word, for example using the Portuguese form ("sweat") rather than the documented monophthongal , or ("law") rather than the expected de-diphthongized form ; compare the latter with the word ("king"), from Portuguese .

Geographic distribution

Macanese is the now nearly extinct native language of the so-called Macanese people, Macau's Eurasian minority, which presently comprises some 8,000 residents in Macau (about 2% of its population), and an estimated 20,000 emigrants and their descendants, especially in Hong Kong, Brazil, California, Canada, Peru, Costa Rica, Australia, Portugal and Paria peninsula of Venezuela. Even within that community, Macanese is actively spoken by just several dozen elderly individuals, mostly women in their eighties or nineties, in Macau and Hong Kong, and only a few hundred people among the Macanese Diaspora overseas, namely in California.

Lexicon

Malay A sizeable amount of the Macanese lexicon derives from Malay, through various Portuguese-influenced creoles (papiás) like the Kristang of Malacca and the creole spoken in the Indonesian island of Flores. Words of Malay origin include ("coin; money"), ("butterfly"), and ("coconut milk").

Sinhala and South Asian languages Many words also came from Sinhala, through the Indo-Portuguese creoles of the Kaffir and Portuguese Burgher communities of Sri Lanka. Some terms are derived from other Indian languages through other Indo-Portuguese creoles brought by natives of Portuguese India, these include Konkani and Marathi languages. Examples of words from these sources include ("flower") and ("vermicelli").

Dutch A few words in Macanese also come from Dutch, likely through Malay or Indonesian. An example is ("toilet, outhouse") deriving from Dutch , probably via Indonesian .

Japanese