Malacca Creole Portuguese

Sociolinguistic History before the Twentieth Century

Series: 

This study addresses a longstanding gap in our knowledge of Malacca Creole Portuguese during the Portuguese, Dutch, and early British colonial periods, while opening new avenues for further research. Drawing on contemporary documents, published sources, and rare linguistic materials, it presents a coherent account of the emergence of the creole under Portuguese rule and its subsequent shaping and persistence during the Dutch and British periods. Historical sociolinguistic parallels between Batavia and Malacca allow a reconstruction of the creole’s form in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Unpublished nineteenth-century documents further reveal the profile of the creole-speaking community in the 1880s and enable a comparative analysis of the language in 1883.
Copyright Year:
2026
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ISBN:
978-90-04-76421-7
Publication:
30 Jul 2026
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ISBN:
978-90-04-75820-9
Publication:
20 Aug 2026
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Alan Norman Baxter, Ph.D. (1985), Australian National University, is a retired Professor of Linguistics of the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. He has published articles, book chapters and monographs including A grammar of Kristang (Malacca Creole Portuguese), (Pacific Linguistics, 1988); and (co-authored with Patrick de Silva) A Dictionary of Kristang – English, (Pacific Linguistics, 2004).
Acknowledgements
List of Maps, Figures, and Tabless
Abbreviations

1 Introduction
 1.1 Backdrop
 1.2 An Essential Pre-Amble concerning Language Names
 1.3 About This Book
 1.4 Questions
 1.5 Framework
 1.6 Outline of the Book
 1.7 A Note on Spelling and Punctuation of Quotations and Linguistic Examples

2 Foundations—Diffusion of Portuguese in Multiethnic Melaka, 1511–1641
 2.1 The Portuguese Language in Melaka—First Contacts
 2.2 Linguistic Consequences of the Conquest
 2.3 What Types of Portuguese Provided Models for Use by Locals?
 2.4 Discussion

3 Continuity and Redirection—The Destiny of Portuguese under the Dutch
 3.1 Demographic Consequences of the Dutch Conquest
 3.2 The Portuguese Population in Later 17th Century Dutch Melaka
 3.4 The Lack of Direct Linguistic Evidence of Local Contact Portuguese
 3.5 Demography of the Portuguese Speech Community, 18th and 19th Centuries
 3.6 Discussion

4 Endurance—Malacca Creole Portuguese in the Early British Period
 4.1 British Observations
 4.2 Missionary Presence and the Use of Portuguese and Indo-Portuguese
 4.3 First Linguistic Notices of Malacca Creole Portuguese
 4.4 1880s: Linguistic Documentation of Malacca Creole Portuguese
 4.5 Discussion

5 Aspects of the Grammar of 19th Century Malacca Creole Portuguese
 5.1 The Expression of Possession
 5.2 The Form of the Verb
 5.3 Verb Tense and Aspect Representation
 5.4 The Negation System
 5.5 Case-Marking: Direct and Indirect Objects
 5.6 The Status of Certain Connective Words
 5.7 Discussion

6 Epilogue

Appendix
Bibliography
Index
This volume will interest scholars and students of creole studies, historical sociolinguistics, Portuguese expansion, and colonial Southeast Asia, as well as readers concerned with language contact, minority languages, and the social history of multilingual communities.
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