3.4.e. Sao Tome and Principe
In Sao Tome they speak the Forro, the Angolar, the Tonga and the
Monco (local languages), beyond the Portuguese. The Forro (also called
Sao Tomean) is a Creole of Portuguese origin. It originated with the
old language spoken in the cities by the population of
mulatos (people with mixed parentage) and freed slaves of the
cities. In the 16th century, a boat with Angolan slaves was wrecked
close to the island; many of them could swim to the island and formed
an apart ethnic group. This group speaks Angolar, another Creole of
Portuguese basis but with more terms of Bantu origin. There are about
78% of similarities between the Forro and the Angolar. The Tonga is a
Creole based on the Portuguese and on other African languages. It is
spoken by the community of descending of the "serviçais"
(servants), contract laborers from other African countries, mainly
Angola, Mozambique and Cape Verde.
The island of Principe mainly speaks the Monco (or Principean),
another Creole of Portuguese basis and with possible additions of
other Indo-European languages. Another language very spoken in
Principe (and also in Sao Tome) is the Cape-Verdian Creole, brought by
the thousands of Cape-Verdians that had emigrated to the country in
the 20th century to work in the agriculture.
The current Portuguese of Sao Tome and Principe keeps many traces
of the archaic Portuguese in the pronunciation, the lexicon and even
in the syntactic construction. It was the language spoken by the
cultivated population, the middle class and the owners of
farms. Currently, it is the Portuguese spoken by the population in
general, while the politicians and the high society use the European
standard Portuguese, many times learned during the studies made in
Portugal.
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