Retention and Attrition of Umbundu in São Tomé and Príncipe

A major event in the modern history of São Tomé and Príncipe, located in the Gulf of Guinea, was the recruitment of contracted labor from Angola, Mozambique, and Cape Verde between 1870 and 1960. This article will address one linguistic effect of this large-scale migration, namely, the retention and attrition of the Umbundu language spoken by the Tongas, who are descendants of the indentured laborers who never repatriated back to their homes in Africa. As opposed to noncontact Umbundu, the Tonga Umbundu (TUm) of São Tomé has a simplified nominal class system and significant borrowings from the Portuguese lexicon, which became part of the TUm class system through incorporation. The sociolinguistic factors that will be considered in evaluating the nature of the Tongas’ linguistic heritage are (a) the language situation that best explains the retention of Umbundu and (b) the typological distance between TUm, Afro-Portuguese Creoles, and Portuguese language.