Cafundó language

Cafundó
Cupópia
Native to	Brazil
Region	Cafundó, São Paulo
Native speakers	(40 cited 1978)
Language family	Indo-European Italic Romance Western Iberian Portuguese Cafundó
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ccd

Cafundó, or Cupópia, is a 'secret' language spoken in the village of Cafundó, São Paulo (Brazil). The language is structurally similar to Portuguese, with a large number of Bantu words in its lexicon.

Cafundó was at first thought to be an African language, but a later study (1986) by Carlos Vogt and Peter Fry showed that its grammatical and morphological structure are those of Portuguese, specifically the Southeast countryside (Caipira) variety; whereas its lexicon is heavily drawn from some Bantu language. It is therefore not a creole language, as it is sometimes considered.

Speakers

The speaker community is very small (40 people in 1978). They live in a rural area, 150km from the city of São Paulo, and are mostly of African descent. They also speak Portuguese, and use Cafundó as a "secret language". A Cafundó speaker and an African-born Bantu (Angolan or Mozambican) speaking Portuguese and Bantu languages can understand each other, because Angolan and Mozambican dialects also added many Bantu words.

References

• Peter Fry and Carlos Vogt (1996) Cafundó, a África no Brasil: Linguagem e Sociedade. São Paulo, Companhia das Letras. ISBN 85-71645-85-X.
• Sílvio Vieira de Andrade Filho (2000) Um Estudo Sociolingüístico das Comunidades Negras do Cafundó, do Antigo Caxambu e de seus Arredores. Secretaria da Educação e Cultura of Sorocaba. Also Ph.D. diss., University of São Paulo. ISBN 85-89017-01-X. Available on-line.

External links

• Web page on Cafundó (in Portuguese)
• Ethnologue listing: CCD