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Description:
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Kristang, or Papiah Kristang, is spoken by a small community in the Hilir
suburb of Malacca, West Malaysia, and by descendants of the Malacca
community elsewhere in Malaysia and in Singapore. Its origins reach back to
Portugal’s colonial endeavours of the sixteeth century, and its strong
cultural traditions and capacity to assimilate outsiders have helped it
survive through the centuries. Contrary to what has sometimes been claimed
by lay authors, Kristang is not sixteenth-century Portuguese. Rather, it is
a Creole language, a language born of the contacts between speakers of
Portuguese and speakers of local and other languages. This dictionary of
Kristang (Malacca Creole Portuguese) is the most exhaustive dictionary of
the language yet published.
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