LANGUAGE CHANGE IN PROGRESS IN THE PORTUGUESE OF MACAU

This is a study of the Portuguese language as spoken by Macaenses in August, 1976 in Macau, of why it has not been absorbed by Chinese, and where it is heading. The corpus, of about thirty thousand words, was obtained through the recordings in situ of conversations with the author, following a questionnaire prepared in advance. A historical, ethnic and linguistic background is given, including a brief description of the old patois, as well as a description of modern Macau, with special reference to education, mass media and the Church. The situation of the Chinese and the Portuguese communities is focused vis-a-vis jobs, languages and each other: how they act, interact and react.; The linguistic analysis includes general remarks of Portuguese Phonology, Morphology and Syntax, with special reference to the Phonology of Rio and Lisbon speech. Macau speech is then analyzed against this background, highlighting its variants: the speech has some unique features attributable to Chinese influence; also, several features found in Brazil, not only in the popular speech, but in that of the middle class. Other traits can be traced to the patois once spoken in the territory. Many of them have a counterpart in the Chinese language that all Macaenses speak, serving as reinforcement of Macau speech variants. The Lexicon is mainly made up of Portuguese words but there are several Spanish words or similar to Spanish, as well as several words from the patois. The few borrowings from Chinese and English cover nonoverlapping fields, except food and kinship. This would confirm that Chinese, English and Portuguese are in a sort of complementary distribution, each with its own sphere of influene. It would also explain why, in spite of the fact that the percenage of Portuguese people is numerically irrelevant in this Chinese milieu--at present 3%--the Chinese language has not absorbed Portuguese.; Rather, and mainly for sociolinguistic reasons, Portuguese has absorbed patois. Because of the uneven distribution of informants according to age and social groups, one feature only is analyzed at each grammatical level according to sociolinguistic considerations. This analysis shows that the higher the social group, the less instances of stigmatized features.; The direction of change of Macau speech points toward eliminating those traits that separate it from Metropolitan Portuguese for the same sociolinguistic reasons that led to the patois.; As for Chinese, English and Portuguese, they will continue to maintain its sphere of influence as long as the status quo is maintained.; Based on the above, several steps are recommended, among them: (1) an update of the sociolinguistic context, for some important events have taken place, namely the establishement of diplomatic relations between the People's Republic of China and Portugal on February 8, 1979, and the creation of a private University in Macau, where classes are scheduled to start in Septermber 1981; (2) a follow-up study of students interviewed to verify direction of change; (3) a new research design based on the 1976 experience, allowing a broader sociolinguistic analysis; (4) a study of the intonation of Macau speech; (5) a study on attitudes.