| Cafundó | |
|---|---|
| Cupópia | |
| Spoken in | Brazil |
| Region | Cafundó, São Paulo |
| Native speakers | unknown (40 cited 1978)[1] |
| Language family |
Indo-European
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | ccd |
Cafundó, or Cupópia, is a 'secret' language spoken in the village of Cafundó, São Paulo (Brazil). The language is structurally similar to Portuguese, with a large number of Bantu words in its lexicon.
Cafundó was at first thought to be an African language, but a later study (1986) by Carlos Vogt and Peter Fry showed that its grammatical and morphological structure are those of Portuguese, specifically the Southeast countryside (Caipira) variety; whereas its lexicon is heavily drawn from some Bantu language. It is therefore not a creole language, as it is sometimes considered.
The speaker community is very small (40 people in 1978). They live in a rural area, 150km from the city of São Paulo, and are mostly of African descent. They also speak Portuguese, and use Cafundó as a "secret language". A Cafundó speaker and an African-born Bantu (Angolan or Mozambican) speaking Portuguese and Bantu languages can understand each other, because Angolan and Mozambican dialects also added many Bantu words.
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