Unity and Diversity in Angolan Portuguese - A Pluricentric Approach.

Abstract

The Portuguese Language variety spoken in Angola has played an important role as a unifying component for different communities throughout the nation. The Portuguese spoken in the vast Angolan context exhibits multiple features from its contact with many different cultural boundaries. Indeed, Portuguese is the official language in Angola, however, the status of Portuguese as an official language competes with other national languages. This has implications worthwhile describing from a linguistic perspective, particularly from the phonetic, phonological, syntactic, and lexical points of view. A new standard of the Portuguese is being created, derived from a pluricentric approach, for language is adapted by the users to serve their communicative purposes. This article addresses the linguistic diversity in Angola (Costa 2013, Petter 2014, Inverno 2009, Mingas 1998, Miguel 2019) to frame the conditions in which the Portuguese language is part of the Angolan society: from its status as a “language of the conqueror” to the appropriation of the language by the people. The linguist environment in the country is clearly a multilingual one, depicting diglossia and polyglossia. Consequently, language interference is a common phenomenon among the languages spoken in Angola. The understanding of the Portuguese language spoken in Angola as a variety, distinct from European Portuguese has been pursued by authors such as Nzau (2011), Nzau, Venâncio and Sardinha (2013), because there are distinctive linguistic features which can be identified (Inverno 2009:4). We will be surveying some of these specific features of Angolan Portuguese from a phonetic, phonological, lexical, morphosyntactic and semantic points of view to ascertain the emergence of a new standard in the country.