Bantu substratum interference in Mozambican Portuguese speech varieties

Abstract

Bantu phonological constraints exert varying types of interference in the varieties of Portuguese spoken in Mozambique. While many of these processes – e. g. voicing dissimilation, consonant sequence simplification, and denasalization – are relatively well known among linguists specialized in the study of Mozambican Portuguese dialects, they have received only passing mention in the literature. Moreover, it is unclear from the available data how Bantu substratum influences characterize the Portuguese of L1 speakers and those who acquired the language at a very young age. The present work is based on the analysis of phonetic data from five native Portuguese speaking informants (three L1 speakers and two L2 speakers) from various locations in Mozambique, and whose language backgrounds represent Changana, Chope, GiTonga, Makhuwa, and Nyungwe. Evidence is presented showing the effects of local Bantu phonologies on informants’s spoken Portuguese varieties for the aforementioned phenomena, plus additional processes that correspond with the literature on Bantu linguistics, such as devoiced aspirated word-final consonants, ‘ whistled’ fricatives, and homorganic nasal epenthesis. We conclude that investigations of substratum phonetic and phonological interference are important for the long-term monitoring of a contact situation, and help to elucidate the principles governing how segments are realized in indigenizing languages.