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 onelinguistic effect of this large-scale migration, namely, the retention and attrition ofthe Umbundu language spoken by the Tongas, who are descendants of the indenturedlaborers who never repatriated back to their homes in Africa. As opposed to noncontactUmbundu, the Tonga Umbundu (TUm) of São Tomé has a simplified nominal class system andsignificant borrowings from the Portuguese lexicon, which became part of the TUm classsystem through incorporation. The sociolinguistic factors that will be considered inevaluating the nature of the Tongas’ linguistic heritage are (a) the language situationthat best explains the retention of Umbundu and (b) the typological distance betweenTUm, Afro-Portuguese Creoles, and Portuguese language