Língua Geral of São Paulo

In the history of Brazil, the Portuguese colonization officially began with the foundation of the Captaincy of São Vicente by the Portuguese nobleman Martim Afonso de Sousa, on January 22, 1532. When Martim Afonso arrived in São Vicente, he met a group of Portuguese, Spanish and Indigenous convicts, led by the Portuguese João Ramalho. The figure of João Ramalho was extremely important for the success of the Portuguese colonization in the region. Ramalho acted as an intermediary in the negotiations between the Tupi Indians and the Portuguese colonizers. He had a close relationship with the natives of the region, was married to Bartira, daughter of the chief Tibiriçá, and was already established among the Tupi since 1508.

With the officialisation of Portuguese colonisation in 1532, the union between white men and indigenous women became frequent, as the scarcity of white women on the Piratininga Plateau meant that, from the early days, the white inhabitant sought out the Indian in legitimate or temporary and multiple unions. The Indian leaders, with the intention of establishing stable alliances with foreigners who had many new and desirable material goods, initially supported this type of interethnic union. The population of the coastal regions of São Vicente, Piratininga and Alto Tietê, at the time of colonization, was made up almost entirely of Guayanás, Tupis and Carijós, speakers of the Tupi language.[2]

The scarcity or total absence of white women in the region can be explained by the fact that the first groups of settlers who disembarked in the Capitania of São Vicente were exclusively composed of men, many of them convicts or castaways. Only five years after the foundation of the captaincy, the first Portuguese couple disembarked in São Vicente.[3]

The interethnic unions, however, were not interrupted with the arrival of this and other couples and the coming of Portuguese wives. What predominated in the region in the first decades of colonisation was the union between white men and Tupi women. In this context, the caboclo emerged in the region, whose mother tongue was the Tupi of the mothers and also of all the relatives, since on the father's side there were no consanguineous relatives. This situation lasted for a long time and the Tupi language prevailed among the Paulista population in the first centuries of Portuguese colonisation.

Gradually, the Tupi of São Paulo ceased to constitute an independent and culturally diverse people and their language began to reproduce itself essentially as the language of the caboclos. The language spoken by this caboclo population gradually became different from the genuine Tupi. In the 17th and 18th centuries, this language, already widespread among the Paulista population, became known as the "Paulista general language".[3]

In the early 17th century, the Paulista Bandeirantes began a series of raids against the Spanish Jesuit missions in search of Guarani slaves to work in Paulista lands. The contact established during this period of wars between Paulistas and Spaniards brought elements of both the Spanish language and Guarani into the Paulista language.[4] Besides the times of war, the slavery of Guaraní people, brought from Guayrá (now Paraná) and Tapes (now Rio Grande do Sul) and Carijós from Santa Catarina brought influences to the Paulista language when they were taken to the region of São Vicente. However, it is believed that because it expanded through the bandeirantes, the paulista language probably presents a greater influence of the Portuguese language.[4]

In the 19th century, even with the intense dissemination of the Portuguese language among the Paulista population, it was still possible to hear, albeit sporadically and only in the older generation, the Paulista language. In 1853, the politician and historian José Inocêncio Alves Alvim, says, having consulted some old men who still remember indigenous words of the Paulista language. We can infer from Alves Alvim's statement that in 1853, in the surroundings of the city of Iguape, the Paulista language, although it was no longer common among the population of the region, was still present in the memory of the older generation. In Curitiba, words from the paulista language were also used, sometimes accompanied by the Portuguese language, as António de Alcântara Machado describes, referring to the paulista term "Ahiva" (English: bad):

In Curitiba, when I asked a poor man how his health was, he answered: sometimes well, sometimes ahiva.

Travelling to the sources of the São Francisco River and the Goiás Province, Augustin Saint-Hilaire presents 48 paulista words, collected by him at the beginning of the 19th century in zambo communities in the Minas Gerais Province.[5]

• Língua Geral

• As Línguas Gerais
• Vocabulário da Língua Geral Paulista. Língua falada no séc. XVII em São Paulo, Cuiabá e Rio Grande do Sul