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78-750: The Mediterranean Lingua Franca , or Sabir , was a contact language , or languages, that were used as a lingua franca in the Mediterranean Basin from the 11th to the 19th centuries. April McMahon describes Sabir as a "fifteenth century proto-pidgin" and "a relic of the original Lingua Franca, a medieval language used by Mediterranean traders and by the Crusaders." Operstein and McMahon categorize Sabir and "Lingua Franca" as separate but related languages. Lingua franca meant literally " Frankish language " in Late Latin , and it originally referred specifically to

156-441: A royal monopoly of all profits from trading within the areas discovered. In 1418, two of Henry's captains, João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira were driven by a storm to Porto Santo an uninhabited island off the coast of Africa which may have been known to Europeans since the 14th century. In 1419 Zarco and Teixeira made a landfall on Madeira . They returned with Bartolomeu Perestrelo , and Portuguese settlement of

234-522: A common language interact closely. Resulting from this contact a pidgin may develop, which may eventually become a full-fledged creole language through the process of creolization (though some linguists assert that a creole need not emerge from a pidgin). Prime examples of this are Aukan and Saramaccan , spoken in Suriname , which have vocabulary mainly from Portuguese, English and Dutch. A much rarer but still observed process, according to some linguists,

312-410: A fast-sailing vessel which had better windward sailing ability than other vessels of the time. Portuguese navigators reached ever more southerly latitudes , advancing at an average rate of one degree a year. Senegal and Cape Verde Peninsula were reached in 1445. In the same year, the first overseas feitoria (trading post) was established under Henry's direction, on the island of Arguin off

390-580: A particular geographic region. For example, in Switzerland , the local French has been influenced by German and vice versa. In Scotland , Scots has been heavily influenced by English, and many Scots terms have been adopted into the regional English dialect. The result of the contact of two languages can be the replacement of one by the other. This is most common when one language has a higher social position ( prestige ). This sometimes leads to language endangerment or extinction . When language shift occurs,

468-610: A permit to build a fort (Fort Manuel) and a trading post that was the first European settlement in India. There in 1503 they built the St. Francis Church . In 1502 Vasco da Gama took the island of Kilwa on the coast of Tanzania, where in 1505 the first fort of Portuguese East Africa was built to protect ships sailing in the East Indian trade. In 1505, king Manuel I of Portugal appointed Francisco de Almeida first Viceroy of Portuguese India for

546-529: A profound effect on the development of Japanese , but Chinese remains relatively free of Japanese influence other than some modern terms that were reborrowed after they were coined in Japan and based on Chinese forms and using Chinese characters. In India , Hindi and other native languages have been influenced by English, and loanwords from English are part of everyday vocabulary. In some cases, language contact may lead to mutual exchange, but that may be confined to

624-440: A sign language and an oral language, even if lexical borrowing and code switching also occur, the interface between the oral and signed modes produces unique phenomena: fingerspelling , fingerspelling/sign combination, initialisation, CODA talk, TDD conversation, mouthing and contact signing . Portuguese discoveries Portuguese maritime exploration resulted in the numerous territories and maritime routes recorded by

702-419: A society is called linguistic ecology . Language contact can take place between two or more sign languages, and the expected contact phenomena occur: lexical borrowing, foreign "accent", interference, code switching, pidgins, creoles, and mixed systems. Language contact is extremely common in most deaf communities , which are almost always located within a dominant oral language culture. However, between

780-518: A three-year period, starting the Portuguese government in the east, headquartered at Kochi. That year the Portuguese conquered Kannur where they founded St. Angelo Fort . The Viceroy's son Lourenço de Almeida arrived in Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka), where he discovered the source of cinnamon . Finding it divided into seven rival kingdoms, he established a defense pact with the kingdom of Kotte and extended

858-453: A trade monopoly for the newly discovered countries. The caravel , an existing ship type, was used in exploration from about 1440. It had a number of advantageous characteristics. These included shallow draft, which was suitable for approaching unknown coasts, and an efficient combination of hull shape (including a rudder attached to the sternpost, unlike some other contemporary types with side-mounted steering oars) and lateen rig, which gave

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936-540: A warehouse in the triangular trade between China, Japan and Europe. In 1570 the Portuguese bought a Japanese port where they founded the city of Nagasaki , thus creating a trading center that for many years was the port from Japan to the world. Portugal established trading ports at far-flung locations like Goa , Ormuz , Malacca , Kochi , the Maluku Islands , Macau , and Nagasaki . Guarding its trade from both European and Asian competitors, Portugal dominated not only

1014-458: Is the formation of mixed languages . Whereas creoles are formed by communities lacking a common language, mixed languages are formed by communities fluent in both languages. They tend to inherit much more of the complexity (grammatical, phonological, etc.) of their parent languages, whereas creoles begin as simple languages and then develop in complexity more independently. It is sometimes explained as bilingual communities that no longer identify with

1092-399: Is typical for their languages to influence each other. Intensive language contact may result in language convergence or relexification . In some cases a new contact language may be created as a result of the influence, such as a pidgin , creole , or mixed language . In many other cases, contact between speakers occurs with smaller-scale lasting effects on the language; these may include

1170-578: The Azores were probably discovered in 1427 by Portuguese ships sailing under Henry's direction, and settled in 1432, suggesting that the Portuguese were able to navigate at least 745 miles (1,200 km) from the Portuguese coast. At around the same time as the unsuccessful attack on the Canary Islands, the Portuguese began to explore the North African coast. Sailors feared what lay beyond Cape Bojador at

1248-609: The Genoese and Venetian trading colonies in the eastern Mediterranean after the year 1000. As the use of Lingua Franca spread in the Mediterranean, dialectal fragmentation emerged, the main difference being more use of Italian and Provençal vocabulary in the Middle East, while Ibero-Romance lexical material dominated in the Maghreb. After France became the dominant power in the latter area in

1326-772: The Ragusan Republic (Dubrovnik). The Portuguese victory was critical for its strategy of control of the Indian Ocean: the Turks and Egyptians withdrew their navies from India, leaving the seas to the Portuguese, setting its trade dominance for almost a century, and greatly assisting the growth of the Portuguese Empire. It also marked the beginning of European colonial dominance in Asia. A second Battle of Diu in 1538 finally ended Ottoman ambitions in India, and confirmed Portuguese hegemony in

1404-628: The Serra do Mar . From the 15 original captainships, only two, Pernambuco and São Vicente, prospered. With permanent settlement came the establishment of the sugar cane industry and its intensive labor demands which were met with Native American and later African slaves. In 1534, Gujarat was occupied by the Mughals and the Sultan Bahadur Shah of Gujarat was forced to sign the Treaty of Bassein (1534) with

1482-618: The Zamorin of Calicut, leaving there some men to establish a trading post. Vasco da Gama's voyage to Calicut was the starting point for deployment of Portuguese feitoria posts along the east coast of Africa and in the Indian Ocean. Shortly after, the Casa da Índia was established in Lisbon to administer the royal monopoly of navigation and trade. Exploration soon lost private support, and took place under

1560-461: The borrowing of loanwords , calques , or other types of linguistic material. Multilingualism has been common throughout much of human history , and today most people in the world are multilingual. Multilingual speakers may engage in code-switching , the use of multiple languages in a single conversation. Methods from sociolinguistics (the study of language use in society), from corpus linguistics and from formal linguistics are used in

1638-411: The "A Famosa", where one of its gates still remains today. Learning of Siamese ambitions over Malacca, Albuquerque immediately sent Duarte Fernandes on a diplomatic mission to the kingdom of Siam (modern Thailand), where he was the first European to arrive, establishing amicable relations between the two kingdoms. In November that year, getting to know the location of the so-called " Spice Islands " in

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1716-751: The 19th century, Algerian Lingua Franca was heavily gallicised (to the extent that locals are reported having believed that they spoke French when conversing in Lingua Franca with the Frenchmen, who in turn thought they were speaking Arabic), and this version of the language was spoken into the nineteen hundreds.... Algerian French was indeed a dialect of French, although Lingua Franca certainly had had an influence on it.... Lingua Franca also seems to have affected other languages. Eritrean Pidgin Italian , for instance, displayed some remarkable similarities with it, in particular

1794-686: The Armada of the Islands protected ships from the Indies en route to Lisbon. In 1525, after Fernão de Magalhães 's expedition (1519–1522), Spain under Charles V sent an expedition to colonize the Moluccas islands , claiming that they were in his zone of the Treaty of Tordesillas , since there was not a set limit to the east. Led by García Jofre de Loaísa , the expedition reached the Moluccas, docking at Tidore . Conflict with

1872-600: The Cape Verde islands. However, as it was not possible at the time to correctly measure longitude , the exact boundary was disputed by the two countries until 1777. The completion of these negotiations with Spain is one of several reasons proposed by historians for why it took nine years for the Portuguese to follow up on Dias's voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, though it has also been speculated that other voyages were, in fact, taking place in secret during this time. Whether or not this

1950-739: The Indian Ocean coast in Somalia , traveling secretly overland, as early as 1490; a diplomatic mission reached the ruler of that nation on October 19, 1520. In 1500, the second fleet to India (which also made landfall in Brazil) explored the East African coast in Southeast Africa , where Diogo Dias discovered the island that he named St. Lawrence, later known as Madagascar . This fleet, commanded by Pedro Álvares Cabral , arrived at Calicut in September, where

2028-595: The Indian Ocean. Under the government of Albuquerque, Goa was taken from the Bijapur sultanate in 1510 with the help of Hindu privateer Timoji . Coveted for being the best port in the region, mainly for the commerce in Arabian horses for the Deccan sultanates , it allowed the Portuguese to move on from their initial guest stay in Cochin. Despite constant attacks, Goa became the seat of

2106-786: The Island of Mozambique and Mombasa on the Kenyan coast. Madagascar was partly explored by Tristão da Cunha and in the same year Mauritius was discovered. In 1509, the Portuguese won the sea Battle of Diu against the combined forces of the Ottoman Sultan Beyazid II , the Sultan of Gujarat , the Mamlûk Sultan of Cairo , the Samoothiri Raja of Kozhikode , the Venetian Republic , and

2184-482: The Moluccas, Albuquerque sent an expedition to find them. Led by António de Abreu , the expedition arrived in early 1512. Abreu went by Ambon, while his deputy commander Francisco Serrão advanced to Ternate , where a Portuguese fort was allowed. That same year, in Indonesia, the Portuguese took Makassar , reaching Timor in 1514. Departing from Malacca, Jorge Álvares came to southern China in 1513. This visit followed

2262-503: The Portuguese already established in nearby Ternate was inevitable, starting nearly a decade of skirmishes. An agreement was reached only with the Treaty of Zaragoza (1529) , which gave the Moluccas to Portugal and the Philippines to Spain. In 1530, John III organized the colonization of Brazil around 15 capitanias hereditárias ("hereditary captainships"), that were given to anyone who wanted to administer and explore them, to overcome

2340-572: The Portuguese as a result of their intensive maritime journeys during the 15th and 16th centuries. Portuguese sailors were at the vanguard of European exploration, chronicling and mapping the coasts of Africa and Asia, then known as the East Indies , and Canada and Brazil (the West Indies ), in what came to be known as the Age of Discovery . Methodical expeditions started in 1419 along West Africa's coast under

2418-463: The Portuguese coat of arms marking their claims, and built forts and trading posts. From these bases, the Portuguese engaged profitably in the slave and gold trades. Portugal enjoyed a virtual monopoly of the Atlantic slave trade for over a century, exporting around 800 slaves annually. Most were brought to the Portuguese capital Lisbon, where it is estimated black Africans came to constitute 10 percent of

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2496-469: The Portuguese government, under the name of Estado da India (State of India) , with the conquest triggering compliance of neighbor kingdoms: Gujarat and Calicut sent embassies, offering alliances and grants to fortify. Albuquerque began that year in Goa the first Portuguese mint in India, taking the opportunity to announce the achievement. In April 1511 Albuquerque sailed to Malacca in modern-day Malaysia,

2574-691: The Portuguese naval efforts. The first victims of slave raids by Portuguese and Spanish were the Guanches of the Canary Islands, a people of Berber origin, who put up fierce resistance but were reduced to near extinction by pillaging and enslavement. In 1415, the Portuguese occupied the North African city of Ceuta to gain a foothold in Morocco and control shipping through the Strait of Gibraltar. They also hoped to extend Christianity and provide an outlet for Portuguese nobles looking to gain riches and honor in war. Among

2652-658: The Portuguese nobleman Pedro Álvares Cabral became the first European to discover Brazil . In 1297, King Dinis of Portugal took personal interest in the development of exports and organized the export of surplus production to European countries. On May 10, 1293, he instituted a maritime insurance fund for Portuguese traders living in the County of Flanders , which were to pay certain sums according to tonnage, accrued to them when necessary. Wine and dried fruits from Algarve were sold in Flanders and England, salt from Setúbal and Aveiro

2730-443: The Portuguese, establishing an alliance to regain the country, giving in exchange Daman , Diu , Mumbai , and Bassein . In 1538 the fortress of Diu was again surrounded by Ottoman ships. Another siege failed in 1547, putting an end to Ottoman ambitions and confirming Portuguese hegemony. In 1542 Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier arrived in Goa at the service of King John III of Portugal , in charge of an Apostolic Nunciature . At

2808-523: The Tordesillas line. Cabral recommended to the Portuguese King that the land be settled, and two follow-up voyages were sent in 1501 and 1503. The land was found to be abundant in pau-brasil , or brazilwood , from which it later inherited its name, but the failure to find gold or silver meant that for the time being Portuguese efforts were concentrated on India. The aim of Portugal in the Indian Ocean

2886-756: The arrival in Guangzhou , where trade was established. Later a trading post at Macau would be established. The Portuguese empire expanded into the Persian Gulf as Portugal contested control of the spice trade with the Ottoman Empire . In 1515, Afonso de Albuquerque conquered the Huwala state of Hormuz at the head of the Persian Gulf, establishing it as a vassal state. Aden , however, resisted Albuquerque's expedition in that same year, and another attempt by Albuquerque's successor Lopo Soares de Albergaria in 1516. Bahrain

2964-585: The coast of Mauritania . It was created to attract Muslim traders and monopolize the business in the routes traveled in North Africa, starting the chain of Portuguese feitorias along the coast. In 1446, Álvaro Fernandes pushed on almost as far as present-day Sierra Leone , and the Gulf of Guinea was reached in the 1460s. As a result of the first meager returns of the African explorations, in 1469 king Afonso V granted

3042-494: The coast. Between 1325 and 1357 Afonso IV of Portugal granted public funding to raise a proper commercial fleet and ordered the first maritime explorations, with the help of Genoese , under command of admiral Manuel Pessanha. In 1341 the Canary Islands , already known to Genoese seafarers, were officially rediscovered under the patronage of the Portuguese king, but in 1344 Castile disputed ownership of them, further propelling

3120-457: The control in coastal areas, where in 1517 was founded the fortress of Colombo. In 1506, a Portuguese fleet under the command of Tristão da Cunha and Afonso de Albuquerque , conquered Socotra at the entrance of the Red Sea and Muscat in 1507, having failed to conquer Ormuz , following a strategy intended to close those entrances into the Indian Ocean. That same year, fortresses were built in

3198-457: The cultures of either of the languages they speak, and seek to develop their own language as an expression of their own cultural uniqueness. Some forms of language contact affect only a particular segment of a speech community. Consequently, change may be manifested only in particular dialects , jargons , or registers . South African English , for example, has been significantly affected by Afrikaans in terms of lexis and pronunciation , but

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3276-473: The defeat at Tangier, Henry retired to Sagres on the southern tip of Portugal where he continued to direct Portuguese exploration until his death in 1460. In 1443, Prince Pedro , Henry's brother, granted him the monopoly of navigation, war, and trade in the lands south of Cape Bojador . Later this monopoly would be backed by the Papal bulls Dum Diversas (1452) and Romanus Pontifex (1455), granting Portugal

3354-503: The enterprise and financial experience of these rivals of the Republic of Venice . In the second half of the fourteenth century outbreaks of bubonic plague led to severe depopulation: the economy was extremely localized in a few towns, and migration from the country led to the abandonment of agricultural land and an increase in rural unemployment. Only the sea offered opportunities, with most people settling in fishing and trading areas along

3432-606: The equator into the Southern Hemisphere and found the islands in the Gulf of Guinea, including São Tomé and Príncipe . In 1471, Gomes' explorers reached Elmina on the Gold Coast (present day Ghana ), and discovered a thriving overland gold trade between the natives and visiting Arab and Berber traders. Gomes established his own trading post there, which became known as “A Mina” ("The Mine"). Trade between Elmina and Portugal grew in

3510-645: The exchange of even basic characteristics of a language such as morphology and grammar . Newar , for example, spoken in Nepal , is a Sino-Tibetan language distantly related to Chinese but has had so many centuries of contact with neighbouring Indo-Iranian languages that it has even developed noun inflection , a trait that is typical of the Indo-European family but rare in Sino-Tibetan. Newar has also absorbed grammatical features like verb tenses . Also, Romanian

3588-635: The exclusive patronage of the Portuguese Crown. The second voyage to India was dispatched in 1500 under Pedro Álvares Cabral . While following the same south-westerly route across the Atlantic Ocean as da Gama (to take advantage of the most favorable winds), Cabral made landfall on the Brazilian coast. This was probably an accidental discovery, but it has been speculated that the Portuguese secretly knew of Brazil's existence and that it lay on their side of

3666-502: The first trade agreement in India was signed. For a short time a Portuguese factory was installed there, but it was attacked by Muslims on December 16 and several Portuguese, including the scribe Pêro Vaz de Caminha , died. After bombarding Calicut as a retaliation, Cabral went to rival Kochi . Profiting from the rivalry between the Maharaja of Kochi and the Zamorin of Calicut, the Portuguese were well received and seen as allies, getting

3744-455: The following years Portuguese mariners discovered and settled the rest of the Azores. Henry suffered a serious setback in 1437 after the failure of an expedition to capture Tangier , having encouraged his brother, King Edward , to mount an overland attack from Ceuta. The Portuguese army was defeated and only escaped destruction by surrendering Prince Ferdinand, the king's youngest brother . After

3822-646: The goal of defending the country against Muslim pirate raids, thus laying the basis for the Portuguese Navy and establishment of a Genoese merchant community in Portugal. Forced to reduce their activities in the Black Sea, the Republic of Genoa had turned to North Africa for trade in wheat and olive oil and a search for gold – navigating also into the ports of Bruges (Flanders) and England. Genoese and Florentine communities were established in Portugal, which profited from

3900-562: The islands began. There, wheat and later sugarcane were cultivated, as in Algarve, by the Genoese, becoming profitable activities. This helped both them and Prince Henry become wealthier. A Portuguese attempt to capture Grand Canary , one of the nearby Canary Islands , which had been partially settled by Spaniards in 1402 was unsuccessful and met with protestations from Castile. Although the exact details are uncertain, cartographic evidence suggests

3978-479: The language that is replaced (known as the substratum ) can leave a profound impression on the replacing language (known as the superstratum ) when people retain features of the substratum as they learn the new language and pass these features on to their children, which leads to the development of a new variety. For example, the Latin that came to replace local languages in present-day France during Ancient Rome times

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4056-628: The language that was used around the Eastern Mediterranean Sea as the main language of commerce . However, the term "Franks" was actually applied to all Western Europeans during the late Byzantine Period . Later, the meaning of lingua franca expanded to mean any bridge language . Its other name in the Mediterranean area was Sabir , a term cognate of saber ("to know") in most Iberian languages and of Italian and Latin sapere and French savoir . Based mostly on Northern Italy's languages (mainly Venetian and Genoese ) and secondarily on Occitano-Romance languages ( Catalan and Occitan ) in

4134-905: The local languages. When English or French ships came to compete with the Portuguese, the crews tried to learn the "broken Portuguese". A process of relexification caused the Lingua Franca and Portuguese lexicon to be substituted by the languages of the peoples in contact. The theory is one way of explaining the similarities between most of the European-based pidgins and creole languages , such as Tok Pisin , Papiamento , Sranan Tongo , Krio and Chinese Pidgin English . Those languages use forms similar to or derived from sabir for 'to know' and piquenho for "children". Lingua Franca left traces in present Algerian slang and Polari . There are traces even in geographical names, such as Cape Guardafui , which literally means "Cape Look and Escape" in Lingua Franca and ancient Italian. Contact language When speakers of different languages interact closely, it

4212-422: The monopoly of trade in part of the Gulf of Guinea to merchant Fernão Gomes , for an annual payment of 200,000 reals . Gomes was also required to explore 100 leagues (480 km) of the coast each year for five years. He employed explorers João de Santarém , Pedro Escobar , Lopo Gonçalves , Fernão do Pó , and Pedro de Sintra , and exceeded the requirement. Under his sponsorship, Portuguese explorers crossed

4290-415: The most important eastern point in the trade network, where Malay met Gujarati, Chinese, Japanese, Javanese, Bengali, Persian and Arabic traders, described by Tomé Pires as invaluable. The port of Malacca became then the strategic base for Portuguese trade expansion with China and Southeast Asia, under the Portuguese rule in India with its capital at Goa . To defend the city a strong fort was erected, called

4368-428: The native languages spoken in the areas over which they have held sway. Especially during and since the 1990s, the internet, along with previous influences such as radio and television, telephone communication and printed materials, has expanded and changed the many ways in which languages can be influenced by each other and by technology. Change as a result of contact is often one-sided. Chinese, for instance, has had

4446-426: The need to defend the territory, since an expedition under the command of Gonçalo Coelho in 1503 had found the French making incursions on the land. That same year, there was a new expedition from Martim Afonso de Sousa with orders to patrol the whole Brazilian coast, banish the French, and create the first colonial towns: São Vicente on the coast, and São Paulo near the edge of the inland plateau ( planalto ) and

4524-427: The next decade. In 1481, the recently crowned João II decided to build São Jorge da Mina fort (Elmina Castle) and factory to protect this trade, which was then held again as a royal monopoly. In 1482, Diogo Cão discovered the mouth of the Congo River . In 1486, Cão continued to Cape Cross , in present-day Namibia , near the Tropic of Capricorn . In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope near

4602-445: The other dialects of English have remained almost totally unaffected by Afrikaans other than a few loanwords. In some cases, a language develops an acrolect that contains elements of a more prestigious language. For example, in England during a large part of the Middle Ages , upper-class speech was dramatically influenced by French to the point that it often resembled a French dialect. The broader study of contact varieties within

4680-524: The participants of the action was the young Prince Henry the Navigator . Appointed governor of the Order of Christ in 1420, while personally holding profitable monopolies on resources in Algarve, he took the lead role in encouraging Portuguese maritime exploration until his death in 1460. He invested in sponsoring voyages down the coast of Mauritania , gathering a group of merchants, shipowners, and other stakeholders interested in new opportunities for maritime trade. Later his brother Prince Pedro granted him

4758-434: The population. In 1492 Christopher Columbus 's discovery for Spain of the New World , which he believed to be Asia, led to disputes between the Spanish and Portuguese. These were eventually settled by the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 which divided the world outside of Europe in an exclusive duopoly between the Portuguese and the Spanish, along a north–south meridian 370 leagues , or 970 miles (1,560 km), west of

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4836-442: The same time Francisco Zeimoto, António Mota , and other traders arrived in Japan for the first time. According to Fernão Mendes Pinto , who claimed to be in this journey, they arrived at Tanegashima , where the locals were impressed by European firearms , which would be immediately made by the Japanese on a large scale. In 1557 the Chinese authorities allowed the Portuguese to settle in Macau through an annual payment, creating

4914-415: The southern tip of Africa, disproving the view that had existed since Ptolemy that the Indian Ocean was separate from the Atlantic. Also at this time, Pêro da Covilhã reached India via Egypt and Yemen , and visited Madagascar. He recommended further exploration of the southern route. As the Portuguese explored the coastlines of Africa, they left behind a series of padrões , stone crosses inscribed with

4992-480: The sponsorship of prince Henry the Navigator , with Bartolomeu Dias reaching the Cape of Good Hope and entering the Indian Ocean in 1488. Ten years later, in 1498, Vasco da Gama led the first fleet around Africa to the Indian subcontinent , arriving in Calicut and starting a maritime route from Portugal to India. Portuguese explorations then proceeded to southeast Asia, where they reached Japan in 1542, forty-four years after their first arrival in India. In 1500,

5070-411: The study of language contact. The most common way that languages influence each other is the exchange of words. Much is made about the contemporary borrowing of English words into other languages, but this phenomenon is not new, and it is not very large by historical standards. The large-scale importation of words from Latin , French and other languages into English in the 16th and the 17th centuries

5148-400: The time, as Europeans did not know what lay beyond on the African coast, and did not know whether it was possible to return once it was passed. Henry wished to know how far the Muslim territories in Africa extended, and whether it was possible to reach the source of the lucrative tran-Saharan caravan gold trade and perhaps to join forces with the long-lost Christian kingdom of Prester John that

5226-492: The use of Italian participles as past or perfective markers. It seems reasonable to assume that these similarities have been transmitted through Italian foreigner talk stereotypes. The similarities contribute to discussions of the classification of Lingua Franca as a language. Although its official classification is that of a pidgin, some scholars adamantly oppose that classification and believe it would be better viewed as an interlanguage of Italian. Hugo Schuchardt (1842–1927)

5304-406: The western Mediterranean area at first, Lingua Franca later came to have more Spanish and Portuguese elements, especially on the Barbary Coast (now referred to as the Maghreb ). Lingua Franca also borrowed from Tamazight , Turkish , French , Greek and Arabic . The grammar of the language used aspects from many of its lexifiers . The infinitive was used for all verb forms and the lexicon

5382-435: Was a profitable export to northern Europe, and leather and kermes , a scarlet dye, were also exported. Portugal imported armor and munitions, fine clothes, and several manufactured products from Flanders and Italy. In 1317, King Dinis made an agreement with Genoese merchant sailor Manuel Pessanha (Pessagno), appointing him first Admiral with trade privileges with his homeland in return for twenty warships and crews, with

5460-407: Was captured in 1521, when a force led by António Correia defeated the Jabrid King, Muqrin ibn Zamil . In a shifting series of alliances, the Portuguese dominated much of the southern Persian Gulf for the next hundred years. The island of Mozambique became a strategic port on the regular maritime route linking Lisbon to Goa, and Fort São Sebastião and a hospital were built there. In the Azores,

5538-403: Was influenced by Gaulish and Germanic . The distinct pronunciation of the Hiberno-English dialect, spoken in Ireland , comes partially from the influence of the substratum of Irish . Outside the Indo-European family, Coptic , the last stage of ancient Egyptian , is a substratum of Egyptian Arabic . Language contact can also lead to the development of new languages when people without

5616-697: Was influenced by the Slavic languages that were spoken by neighbouring tribes in the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire not only in vocabulary but also phonology . English has a few phrases, adapted from French, in which the adjective follows the noun: court-martial, attorney-general, Lake Superior. A language's influence widens as its speakers grow in power. Chinese, Greek , Latin, Portuguese , French, Spanish , Arabic , Persian , Sanskrit , Russian , German and English have each seen periods of widespread importance and have had varying degrees of influence on

5694-459: Was more significant. Some languages have borrowed so much that they have become scarcely recognisable. Armenian borrowed so many words from Iranian languages , for example, that it was at first considered a divergent branch of the Indo-Iranian languages and was not recognised as an independent branch of the Indo-European languages for many decades. The influence can go deeper, extending to

5772-462: Was primarily Italo-Romance , with a Spanish interface. As in Arabic, vowel space was reduced, and Venetian influences can be seen in the dropping of certain vowels and intervocalic stops. This mixed language was used widely for commerce and diplomacy and was also current among slaves of the bagnio , Barbary pirates and European renegades in precolonial Algiers . Historically, the first to use it were

5850-485: Was rumoured to exist somewhere to the east. In 1434, one of Prince Henry's captains, Gil Eanes , passed this obstacle. Once this psychological barrier had been crossed, it became easier to probe further along the coast. Within two decades of exploration, Portuguese ships had bypassed the Sahara . Westward exploration continued over the same period: Diogo de Silves discovered the Azores island of Santa Maria in 1427 and in

5928-579: Was the case, the long-standing Portuguese goal of finding a sea route to Asia was finally achieved in a ground-breaking voyage commanded by Vasco da Gama . Vasco da Gama's squadron left Portugal on 8 July 1497, consisting of four ships and a crew of 170 men. It rounded the Cape and continued along the coast of Southeast Africa, where a local pilot was brought on board who guided them across the Indian Ocean, reaching Calicut in western India in May 1498. After some conflict, da Gama got an ambiguous letter for trade with

6006-475: Was the first scholar to investigate the Lingua Franca systematically. According to the monogenetic theory of the origin of pidgins that he developed, Lingua Franca was known by Mediterranean sailors including the Portuguese. When the Portuguese started exploring the seas of Africa, America, Asia and Oceania, they tried to communicate with the natives by mixing a Portuguese -influenced version of Lingua Franca with

6084-426: Was to ensure the monopoly of the spice trade . Taking advantage of the rivalries that pitted Hindus against Muslims, the Portuguese established several forts and trading posts between 1500 and 1510. In East Africa , small Islamic states along the coast of Mozambique , Kilwa , Brava , Sofala and Mombasa were destroyed, or became either subjects or allies of Portugal. Pêro da Covilhã had reached Ethiopia (via

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