Mozambican Portuguese

According to the 1997 census,[2] 40% of the population of Mozambique spoke Portuguese. 9% spoke it at home, and 6.5% considered Portuguese to be their mother tongue. According to the general population survey taken in 2017, Portuguese is now spoken natively by 16.6% of the population aged 5 and older (or 3,686,890) and by one in every five people aged 15 to 19.[3] First language speakers make up 38.3% of the urban population (and 43.9% of all urban teenagers aged 15 to 19) and 5.1% of the total population in rural areas.

Portuguese is a post-colonial language. Introduced during the colonial era, Portuguese was selected as the official language of the new state as it was ethnically neutral. It was also the common language of the elites who received their post-secondary education in Portugal. Portuguese played an important role in the rhetoric of the independence movement, being seen as a potential vehicle for the articulation of a national identity.

Mozambique has extraordinary enthnolinguistic diversity, with no one language dominating demographically. Portuguese serves as a lingua franca allowing communication of Mozambicans with fellow citizens of other ethnicities, including especially white Mozambicans. Of those Mozambicans who speak Portuguese, the majority are non-native speakers, thus spoken with accents of African languages. The lack of native speakers is due, in part, to the exodus of massive number of white Mozambicans to places such as Portugal, South Africa, and Brazil and to the fact that the country is far from the rest of the Lusosphere. This left very few native speakers of Portuguese in Mozambique. But in cities like Maputo, it is the native language of majority of residents.

The standard Mozambican Portuguese used in education, media and legal documents is based on European Portuguese vocabulary used in Lisbon, but Mozambican Portuguese dialects differ from standard European Portuguese both in terms of pronunciation and colloquial vocabulary.

Standard European Portuguese is the norm of reference in Mozambique. In terms of pronunciation, however, Mozambican Portuguese shows several departures, some of which are due to the influence of other languages of Mozambique:

• Vowel reduction is not as strong as in Portugal.
• The elision of word-final 'r' (for example, estar as [eʃˈta] instead of [eʃˈtaɾ])
• Occasional pronunciation of the initial and final 'e' as [i] (for example, felicidade as [felisiˈdadi] instead of [felisiˈdadɨ] or [fɨlisiˈðaðɨ]).
• /b, d, ɡ/ are pronounced as plosives [b, d, ɡ] in all positions.

The above tendencies are stronger in vernacular speech and less marked in cultivated speech, thus the pronunciation of first-language speakers sound more European Portuguese and the enumerated conditions listed above except latter.

There are many words and expressions borrowed from indigenous languages of Mozambique into Portuguese. Examples include:

• chima from the Emakhuwa, Cisena and Cinyungwe languages, is a type of porridge
• xituculumucumba from Xirona is a type of bogeyman
• machamba from Swahili refers to agricultural land
• dumba-nengue from Xirona is a term used for informal trade or commerce
• madala from Xichangana is a person of high status or esteem
• nhamussoro from Cindau is a person who can mediate between the living and the dead

Mozambican Portuguese also borrowed words of Arabic origin, because of national Islamic presence.

• metical (Mozambican currency, from mitķāl, an Arabic unit of weight, from taķāl', weigh).

One also finds neologisms in Mozambican Portuguese such as

• machimbombo the word for bus also shared with other lusophone African countries.
• cronicar, the word crónica turned into a verb
• desconseguir meaning 'to fail' a negation of the verb conseguir using the prefix 'des-' rather than não.
• depressar instead of ir depressa
• agorinha instead of agora mesmo
• tirar dinheiro meaning financiar, 'to finance'
• tirar lágrimas meaning chorar, 'to cry'
• assistir televisão instead of ver a televisão
• comer dinheiro ('eat money') meaning 'to embezzle'
• mata-bicho ('kill the beast') meaning 'breakfast'

There are also words which, as a result of semantic expansion, have acquired additional meanings:

• estrutura which in addition to 'structure' also means 'authority'
• situação which is used to mean 'conflict' or 'war'.
• calamidade can mean clothes donated to victims of natural disasters or conflict. It also refers to divorcées and widows who have begun a new relationship.
• nascer, 'to be born' has the additional meaning of 'to give birth to'

Many of these words came to Portugal, which was settled by returning Portuguese refugees after Mozambican independence. These words were also brought to South Africa and Brazil by Portuguese refugees after independence.

• African Portuguese
• Languages of Mozambique
• Escola Portuguesa de Moçambique
• São Tomean Portuguese
• Southern African Development Community

• Linguistic Resources of Mozambican Portuguese
• Bibliography on Mozambican Portuguese (1964–2014)
• O Português na África – Moçambique
• Em direcção ao primeiro léxico de usos do português moçambicano
• Africa’s Latin Quarter