Tracing the African roots of Sri-Lanka Portuguese

这个项目的目的是记录斯里兰卡西北部非洲裔社区中一种极度濒危的语言——斯里兰卡葡萄牙语（SLP）。特别是，我们将重点记录和分析manja，这是这些社区仅存的非洲遗产的语言和文化表达；用讲话者自己的话来说，“贫穷是我们的困境，曼加是我们唯一的遗产”。我们将努力通过将最先进的理论与民族志方法相结合的仔细文献，使他们唯一的遗产可见。虽然在斯里兰卡，那些认同葡萄牙语并声称自己是葡萄牙血统的人仍然把克里奥尔语作为母语，但在Kaffirs（斯里兰卡的一个民族，部分是16世纪葡萄牙商人和被奴役的班图人的后裔）中，这种语言现在只被包含在他们的圣歌manja的歌词中。Manja是这些社区仅存的非洲（可能是莫桑比克）遗产。然而，至关重要的是，在（后）殖民时期的叙事中，日式纸牌是缺席的。在1993年，斯里兰卡前总统将Sirambiyadiya的社区带到一个文化节上表演之前，manja的文化实践一直是严格意义上的团体活动。近年来，由于对分散的非洲侨民的兴趣，该社区获得了一些牵引力。尽管斯里兰卡语是几代卡菲尔人的母语，但目前唯一会说斯里兰卡语的人已经90岁了，因为其他人都转向了僧伽罗语（一种印度雅利安语和学校教学语言），没有人可以和她说斯里兰卡语，而岛上的另一种主要语言是泰米尔语（德拉威语）。因此，来自非洲语言（如Emakhuwa，可能还有CiYao和斯瓦希里语）的manja及其“珍贵”词汇和结构也面临灭绝的威胁。如果我们现在不采取行动，我们将永远失去在全球南方这个有限的空间中了解语言形成的机会，在这里殖民者的语言（葡萄牙语）、非洲语言（来自南普拉地区）和斯里兰卡土著语言接触过。尽管人们对前者和后者都有相当的了解，但关于非洲人存在的记录却很少。我们的项目通过对manjas的深入分析和广泛的综合，将实地调查数据与从档案中挖掘的数据相结合，将在社会获取适当的场景中进行表达。最终的结果将是重建非裔斯里兰卡葡萄牙人的形成。在此过程中，我们将测试基于线索的历史重建，并改进我们的语言接触建模方法。此外，我们将为理解印度洋和大西洋克里奥尔人的出现之间的异同铺平道路；另一方面，身份是如何通过大麻得到强化的；从而引发了关于全球南方、后殖民/非殖民理论、移民研究和国际奴隶制研究的讨论。然而，最重要的是，我们将授权演讲者继续表演祈祷，并制定他们的混合和多重身份，这将为地方，国家和跨国社会带来重要的心理社会和认知效益。

The purpose of this project is to document a critically endangered language—Sri Lanka Portuguese (SLP)—among Afrodescent communities in north-western Sri Lanka. In particular, we will focus on documenting and analysing manja, the only remaining linguistic and cultural expression of African heritage for these communities; in the words of the speakers themselves 'Poverty is our plight and manja is our only inheritance'. We will strive to give visibility to their only inheritance through careful documentation combining state-of-the-art theorising with the ethnographic method.Whilst the Creole language is still spoken in Sri Lanka as a mother-tongue by those who identify with the Portuguese and claim to be of Portuguese descent, amongst the Kaffirs (a Sri Lanka ethnic group which is partially descendant from 16th C. Portuguese traders and enslaved Bantu people) the language is now only encapsulated in the lyrics of their chant-like songs called manja. Manja is the only remaining African (possibly Mozambican) heritage of these communities. Crucially, however, manja is absent from the (post-)colonial narratives. Cultural praxis in manja has been a strictly in-group activity until a former Sri-Lanka President brought the community in Sirambiyadiya to perform in a cultural festival in 1993. Over recent years, the community has gained some traction due to the interest in scattered African diasporas. Despite SLP being the native language for generations of Kaffirs, currently the only speaker left is 90-years old and she has nobody to speak SLP with since everyone else has shifted to Sinhala (an Indo-Aryan language and language of instruction at school)—the other major language of the island being Tamil (which is Dravidian). Consequently, manja and its 'precious' words and structures from African languages such as Emakhuwa, possibly CiYao, and Kiswahili are also under threat of extinction.If we do not act now we shall forever miss the opportunity to understand language formation in this liminal space of the Global South where the language of the colonisers (Portuguese), the African languages (from the Nampula area) and the indigenous Sri Lanka languages came into contact. Although a fair deal is known about the former and the latter, records of an African presence are sparse. Our project through an in-depth analysis of the manjas and wide-scoping synthesis combining fieldwork data with data mined from archives will be couched within socio-acquisitionally appropriate scenarios. The end-result would be a plausible reconstruction of the formation of Afro-Sri Lanka Portuguese. In doing so, we will test cue-based historical reconstruction and refine our approach to language contact modelling. Moreover, we will be paving the way to understanding differences/similarities between the emergence of Creoles of the Indian Ocean versus the Atlantic Ocean, on the one hand; and how identity is reinforced through manja, on the other; thus feeding into discussion about Global South, Postcolonial/Decolonial Theory, Migration Studies, and International Slavery Studies. Most importantly, however, we will be empowering speakers to continue performing manjas and enacting their mixed and multiple identities which will yield important psycho-social and cognitive benefits for the local, national and transnational societies.