Afro-Brazilian languages: the case of the Negro da Costa

Columnist Mateus Miranda explores the curiosities of the Lusophone world, drawing from his experiences as a native Brazilian Portuguese instructor living around the globe.

“Milk! Corn! Rice! Cattle! Swine!” Located in the state of Minas Gerais, where I was born, the city of Bom Despacho, Brazil is dedicated mainly to agriculture. As in all cities in the countryside of this state, everything tends to revolve around the parish church. Couples stroll, children play, and funeral and religious processions pass. Near the church of this small city, you can take the pets to Cambuá [kãbuˈa] vet clinic and also buy Mavero [maˈveɾʊ] dairy products at the market. Cambuá[kãbuˈa] and mavero[maˈveɾʊ] mean dog and milk, respectively, but although Portuguese is the official language of Brazil, these are not Portuguese words. The town of Bom Despacho is the cradle of an intangible heritage: the Negro da Costa or Tabatinga language, comprised of mostly Bantu lexicon and spoken mainly by an Afro-Brazilian population. Unfortunately, the language is gradually being forgotten.

Bom Despacho located within the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil

Credit: https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bom_Despacho

The linguistic change started right after the Portuguese arrival in Brazil. Portuguese came into contact with indigenous languages and many others brought by enslaved Africans, which played an important role in the constitution of Brazilian Portuguese. Unfortunately, many of these languages are at risk of disappearing. In this column, I invite you to embark with me on a journey which describes an endangered language in Brazil I had the opportunity to work with a few years ago.

Minas Gerais, the state where Bom Despacho is located, received large contingents of enslaved Africans, which gave it the highest concentration of slaves in the country. As a result, the slave trade had a profound impact on the colonyof Minas Gerais, one example of which can be seen in the mining city of Ouro Preto, also located in Minas Gerais and declared by UNESCO to be a World Heritage Site. Approximately half a million slaves were used to mine for gold and diamonds in the surrounding areas of Ouro Preto, which resulted in the rapid growth of the city and the expansion of Minas Gerais.

In 2015, while a linguistics undergraduate student at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), my alma mater, I had the opportunity to develop a project on the Negro da Costa language with Professor Sônia Queiroz who has dedicated part of her research career to the study of African languages in Brazil. Professor Queiroz performed work on this language in 1984, writing a Master’s thesis on it, and in 1998 published her book Pé preto no barro branco: A língua dos negros da Tabatinga (Black feet on white clay: The language of the black people of Tabatinga).

Chapel of Senhor Bom Jesus da Cruz do Monte in the Tabatinga neighbourhood in Bom Despacho, Brazil

Credit: Mateus Miranda and Gabriel Santana

There have been many contributions to linguistic science where other Afro-Brazilian languages have been recorded and studied. One such linguist was Antonio da Costa Peixoto, who collected manuscripts of African languages in 1734 and 1741 in Ouro Preto. Another linguist, Aires da Mata Machado Filho, published registers comprised of a local language vocabulary and songs called vissungos, which were sung by slaves in the mines and at funerals. Yeda Pessoa de Castro, an ethnolinguist, published A língua jeje-mina no Brasil: um falar africano em Ouro Preto do Século XVIII”. (Jeje-mina language in Brazil: An African speech in the 18th Century Ouro Preto). In relation to the Negro da Costa language, in the modern era, only a few people continue to speak the language, which has furthered its path to extinction. Byrd[1], who studied Calunga, points out that studying African lexical items, in languages such as Negro da Costa, Calunga and Catumba provides valuable data on previously spoken African language varieties, in addition to those which are still maintained. According to Byrd, these Africanisms are important “linguistic fossils” which can aid linguists to unearth the African linguistic past of Brazil. Some “fossils” demonstrate that Bantu languages, such as Kimbundu, Umbundu, and Kikongo were present in Brazil and present possible avenues where the Africanisms entered Brazilian Portuguese and impacted Brazilian culture.

[1] Steven Byrd, "The Lexicon Of Calunga And A Lexical Comparison With Other Forms Of Afro-Brazilian Speech From Minas Gerais, São Paulo, and Bahia" (2010). Society, Culture and Languages Faculty Publications.

São Francisco de Assis Church, Ouro Preto, Brazil

Credit: Mateus Miranda

I decided to personally reach out to the community of Bom Despacho to investigate the situation of the Negro da Costa language. As a result, I had the chance to record a short documentary which included topics such as the history of the slaves’ arrival in Bom Despacho, how the city was built, the Negro da Costa language itself, and the relationship between the language and people in Bom Despacho. Further, in 2016, I had a paper accepted at the Sixth International Welcoming African Languages Conference (SIALA), hosted in Belo Horizonte, which integrated the panel Language studies on Bantu and Kwa in Mozambique and Benin and Bantu languages in Brazil. I presented the language status and stressed the importance of preserving the heritage of the community.

A modern example of why the language must be saved is visible in the life of Maria Joaquina da Silva, also known as Fiota. Before she passed away many years ago, Fiota was the most fluent speaker of Negro da Costa in Bom Despacho and was aware of the importance of preserving this intangible heritage language. Since her passing, what has happened in Bom Despacho is that Fiota’s legacy of Negro da Costa is not being passed on to future generations. When investigating how the language is integrated within the city, however, one can find words of Negro da Costa integrated in the city in products or in commerce. The picture below is a clear example of how this integration happens. It shows the sign of a bakery called Conjolo du Conf Conf, which means ‘house of bread’. It is also integrated in their slogan, which mixes Portuguese with the lexical item Conf Conf ‘Onde você encontra o melhor Conf Conf da cidade!’ that means ‘where you find the best bread of the city’.

Bakery sign mixing Portuguese and the Negro da Costa language, Bom Despacho, Brazil

Credit: Mateus Miranda and Gabriel Santana

I now invite you to watch the mini documentary below:

Prior to the passing of laws that were created to include more aspects of history and culture in classes, to some extent, we remained ignorant to the contributions of African cultures to the formation of Brazilian culture, but in recent years, these laws have reinforced recognition of these cultures as an integral part of modern-day Brazil. Furthermore, these laws justify the investment in research which allows for dissemination of the knowledge of history, in addition to language and artistic expressions of African people, who greatly contributed to the history and ethnic composition of Brazil. For instance, Law No. 10.639 was passed in 2003 and made the teaching of African and Afro-Brazilian culture and history mandatory in all Brazilian schools. In practice, we note that the State and many teachers do not enforce this law, resulting in the loss of culture over generations. Negro da Costa has largely suffered from a lack of exposure of students to its history, which I believe is a direct result of not enforcing these laws. Additionally, Law No. 11.645, passed in 2008, mandates the study of Afro-Brazilian and indigenous Brazilian people’s history and culture, which impacted Brazilian literature, art, and history, in the basic education system. The law was intended to discuss the best way to approach diversity in the classroom, which examines how the contributions of Afro-Brazilians and indigenous Brazilians, in addition to other groups, influenced the formation of, or has had a direct impact on everyday Brazilian culture.

In summary, the linguistic situation in Brazil is complex and a lot of work remains to be done to prevent these languages, like the Negro da Costa language, from becoming extinct. If we let languages like Negro da Costa die out, we will ultimately miss out on a tremendous opportunity to understand the African influence on Brazil and on Brazilian Portuguese.