The Daman and Diu Portuguese Creole, pt, língua crioula de Damão e Diu and by its native speakers as meaning "home language", refers to variety of Indo-Portuguese creole spoken in the

Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu is a union territory in India. The territory was constituted through the merger of the former territories of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. Plans for the proposed merger were announced by the ...

union territory, in the

Konkan region The Konkan ( kok, कोंकण) or Kokan () is a stretch of land by the western coast of India, running from Damaon in the north to Karwar in the south; with the Arabian Sea to the west and the Deccan plateau in the east. The hinterland ...

of India. Before the Indian annexation of the territory, the creole spoken by the Damanese natives underwent through a profound

decreolisation Decreolization is a postulated phenomenon whereby over time a creole language reconverges with the lexifier from which it originally derived. The notion has attracted criticism from linguists who argue there is little theoretical or empirical b ...

in the erstwhile

Portuguese Goa and Damaon The State of India ( pt, Estado da Índia), also referred as the Portuguese State of India (''Estado Português da Índia'', EPI) or simply Portuguese India (), was a state of the Portuguese Empire founded six years after the discovery of a se ...

colony, a phenomenon whereby the Indo-Portuguese creole reconverged with

European Portuguese European Portuguese ( pt, português europeu, ), also known as Portuguese of Portugal (Portuguese: português de Portugal), Iberian Portuguese (Portuguese: português ibérico), and Peninsular Portuguese (Portuguese: português peninsular), refer ...

Daman Indo-Portuguese

The Daman creole is a descendant of the Norteiro creole, spoken originally by the '' Norteiros'' on the Coast from

Chaul Chaul is a historic town located in the Raigad district of Maharashtra, India. The Korlai Fort is located nearby. History The town was famous for cotton manufactured goods in the 15th and 16th century, According to Varthema, Chaul was prod ...

, Baçaim,

Bombay Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

Daman and Diu Daman and Diu (; ) was a former union territory in northwestern India. With an area of , it was the smallest administrative subdivision of India on the mainland. The territory comprised two districts, Damaon and Dio island, geographically sep ...

. The

superstrate In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or sup ...

language is Portuguese. The substrate of the Daman creole is likely to be Konkani.

Gujarati Gujarati may refer to: * something of, from, or related to Gujarat, a state of India * Gujarati people, the major ethnic group of Gujarat * Gujarati language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by them * Gujarati languages, the Western Indo-Aryan sub ...

has also been suggested as a possible substrate, but this is doubtful since the

Gujarati people The Gujarati people or Gujaratis, are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group who reside in or can trace their ancestry or heritage to the present-day western Indian state of Gujarat. They primarily speak Gujarati, an Indo-Aryan language. While G ...

moved into the region only ''after'' the Portuguese arrived.

Diu Indo-Portuguese

The Diu Indo-Portuguese or Diu Portuguese is spoken in

Diu district Diu district (Indo-Portuguese; ''Distrito de Dio'') is one of the three districts of the union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu of India. The district is made up of Diu Island and two small enclaves on the Indian mainland ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. It is a

creole language A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that develops from the simplifying and mixing of different languages into a new one within a fairly brief period of time: often, a pidgin evolved into a full-fledged language. ...

based mainly on

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

and

. It is a member of the larger family of

Indo-Portuguese creoles Indo-Portuguese creoles are the several Portuguese creoles spoken in the erstwhile Portuguese Indian settlements, Cochin Portuguese Creole, Fort Bassein, Goa and Damaon, Portuguese Ceylon etc, in present-day India and Sri Lanka. These creoles ...

, particularly close to the variety of Daman. There is a considerably vital oral tradition in this language, with songs regularly performed in Diu, elsewhere in India and among Indo-Portuguese communities abroad. Widely spoken in the past, it was first documented in the 19th century by the initiative of

Hugo Schuchardt Hugo Ernst Mario Schuchardt (4 February 1842, Gotha (town), Gotha (Thuringia) – 21 April 1927, Graz (Styria)) was an eminent Germany, German linguistics, linguist, best known for his work in the Romance languages, the Basque language, and in mixed ...

. At present, the language is spoken natively by most of the local Catholics, numbering about 180, but is potentially endangered by the pressure of other languages such as

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

and standard Portuguese.

Number of speakers

The Portuguese heritage in Daman is more common and lively than in Goa and this helped to keep the language alive. The language is spoken by an estimated number of 2,000 Damanese. Besides the , Gujarati and Portuguese are also found in the territory.

References

;Daman * ;Diu * * *

Daman Indo-Portuguese

Diu Indo-Portuguese

Number of speakers

See also

References

Further reading