ABSTRACT
One compelling piece of evidence in support of the single-source theory is the fact that every English-based creole has at least a few lexical items from Portuguese. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language documents, for example, that thirty eight percent of the vocabulary of Saramaccan, the English-based creole of Surinam, is of Portuguese origin. In present-day Africa, along with three principal Portuguese-based creoles, there are Portuguese loan words in indigenous as well as other European languages. In spite of the black Portuguese vernaculars’ social and comic stigma, they increasingly came to serve as verbal markers of cultural resistance and social protest. Ostensibly, the threat to Portuguese’s status in Mozambique and southern Africa and, indeed, its place in the world inspired the symposium. And some participants did touch on the paradoxes that attend the hegemony of Portuguese in a country where many, if not most, citizens do not have a command of the official language.
