Patuá

Content courtesy of Wikipedia:

Macanese Patois (known as Patuá to its speakers) is a Portuguese-based creole language with a substrate from Malay, Cantonese and Sinhalese, which was originally spoken by the Macanese community of the Portuguese colony of Macau. It is now spoken by a few families in Macau and in the Macanese diaspora.

On February 20, 2009, the new edition of UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger classified Patua as a “critically endangered” language. The Atlas puts the number of Patua speakers at 50 as of the year 2000. It underwent decreolization and a shift to Standard Portuguese while Macau was still under Portuguese administration.

The language is also called by its speakers Papia Cristam di Macau (“Christian speech of Macau”), and has been nicknamed Dóci Língu di Macau (“Sweet Language of Macau”) and Doci Papiaçam (“sweet speech”) by poets. In Portuguese it is called MacaenseMacaista Chapado (“pure Macanese”), or Patuá (from French patois).

See the Macanese Library website to learn more about the Patuá, lexicon with definitions and pronunciations, and links to more information.