Over four centuries, the Portuguese who settled in Macau evolved their own language, the Macau patuá, a dialect of Portuguese with infusions from the Malay peninsula, Sinhalese and Cantonese, with a smattering from English and even Dutch.  That so-called Creole language was discouraged in schools, being seen as  the language of the uneducated, but it nevertheless survived until the twentieth century.  In some sense it was a primitive language and yet its phrases, frequently interspersed with words from two or three languages, were richly inventive and often wickedly humorous, revealing a surprising sophistication. 

Today it is all but dead, remembered fondly by the very old and spoken only by a handful dispersed all over the world.  Interestingy, it has a close relative, Papia Cristam, in the Portuguese Village in Malacca.  UNESCO has declared the Macau patuá to be an endangered language. 

Fortunately researchers have documented it, and we have added audio to preserve its authentic pronunciation.  Here we include its lexicon with audio,  poems, songs, articles and videos from a drama group.

This short introduction to the patuá is based on a primer by “Riri” d’Assumpção in his unpublished Anecdotes from Old Macau. – HdA Website Administrator