Macanese Patois

For the local dialect of Standard Portuguese, see Macanese Portuguese.
Macanese Patois
patuá
Native toMacau
EthnicityMacanese
Native speakers
50 in Macau (2007)[1]
perhaps hundreds or more than a thousand among the Macanese diaspora; virtually all speakers at least bilingual; total speakers: 5,000 (2007; in Macau)
Portuguese–Cantonese creole
  • Macanese Patois
Language codes
ISO 639-3mzs
Glottologmaca1262
ELPPatuá
Linguasphere51-AAC-ai
Location map of Macau
Patuá is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger[2]

Macanese patois (endonym: Patuá) is a Portuguese-based creole language with a substrate from Cantonese, Malay and Sinhala, which was originally spoken by the Macanese community of the Portuguese colony of Macau. It is now spoken by a few families in Macau and in the Macanese diaspora.

UNESCO’s Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger classifies Patua as a "critically endangered" and places the number of speakers at 50 as of 2000.[2]

  1. ^ Macanese Patois at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference UNESCO endangered was invoked but never defined (see the help page).