Cochin Portuguese Creole

Cochin Indo-Portuguese, also known as Vypin Indo-Portuguese from its geographic centre, was an Indo-Portuguese creole formerly spoken on the Malabar coast of India, particularly in Fort Cochin. It went extinct in 2010 and was spoken only by a few Christian families on Vypeen Island (Vypin Island) in the city of Cochin (Kochi) in the state of Kerala.

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 Dutch 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.

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