Language Policy: No Man’s Land, Common LandNotes from a Mozambican Observation Post

Armando Jorge LopesEmeritus Professor

Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique

This paper engages on two fronts. The first goes back to a 1998 University of Lisbon summer school course at Arrábida on Portuguese language policy in Africa and Europe where I suggested (in a paper published in 2002), within the ambit of the transdisciplinarity of Applied Linguistics, the construction of a convergence between language planning, which I consider to be a scientific theory, and language policy, that is indigenised theory, which is practice. I want here, in this Applied Linguistics interface, which is located in no man’s land because the contiguity of the borders between language planning and language policy creates this special place of belonging and reflection for all, to pick up again some of the support themes of the ecological system of the Portuguese language. These are, among others, the theme of language custody, the issue of the methodological paradigm for this type of research, the theme of the naturalisation of language and its uses, that of the substitution of an official language of wider communication by another, and the theme of language death. Following from the language planning and language policy front, a second front takes us to the future, and in this way I attempt to reflect on the transdisciplinary notion of ‘Lusophony’ which, coming from terra nullius, has called for conceptualisation and operationalisation, at the same time as I try to discuss pockets of the subject which, similarly to language planning, display eminently social, cultural and historical interfaces, and which permeate questions treated in the first front of this paper.

Key words: language planning, language policy, Lusophony, transdiscipline.

Guest Plenary paper at the International Conference “The Interfaces of Lusophony – Language Policies in the Lusophone Space”, University of Minho, Braga, 4th – 6th July 2013.

No part of this English version of the Minho paper may be reproduced without the prior permission of the author ajplopes@zebra.uem.mz or the Universityof Minho.

Introduction

A while ago, as happens several times a year, I crossed the border between Ressano Garcia on the Mozambican side, and Komatipoort, on the South African side. Only this time it was different. Perhaps I was pressured by the time approaching when I had to write a paper for this international conference in the beautiful city of Braga. While crossing no man’s land -- that strip of little more than two hundred meters which belongs to nobody, but joins the two sides -- I said to myself: ‘Here is my paper’. Let me move on then, to explain, and I hope that the argument will be useful rather than boring.

Lusophony is the formulation of an idea, a transdisciplinary concept which I judge best treated through the transdiscipline of Applied Linguistics, referred to by James (1993). Applied Linguistics functions as an interface which concerns itself with the no man’s land between language planning, which is a scientific theory, and language policy, which is indigenised theory, or rather the theory of practice. Lusophony, which in my opinion is a transdisciplinary concept, in construction, belongs in the agenda of Applied Linguistics, which includes the themes of custody of language, uses of language, substitution, revitalization or death of a language, among others. These themes or concepts are essential for reflection on Lusophony because they are contiguous. And so we have the transdisciplinary concept of Lusophony relating with other transdisciplinary concepts like those referred to, which are related to it, at the heart of transdisciplinary Applied Linguistics, this being delimited, through contiguity, by language planning on one side of the border, and language policy on the other. These concepts are, then, the object of treatment in tandem on the part of the two theories.

Language policy consists of a body of ideas, laws, regulations, rules and practices which aims to bring about a desired linguistic change in a particular community of speakers. Or, as Luís Bernardo Honwana (2011), in a masterful address before an audience predominantly of educators, sought to define the concept through the Mozambican case, but perhaps not that alone,returning to foci of an ideological and historical nature:

The state is simultaneously the final objective of the nationalist movement and the instrument for the construction of the nation which, consequently, must have a multicultural nature. In this way, language policy comes to substitute the violent processes which led to the formation of the current universal and Eurasian languages. It is a fundamental element in the validation and defence of multiculturalism as a national alternative.1

In its turn, Language planning, formerly known as ‘language engineering’, consists of a group of activities which aims to conceive of language changes within a determined community, and whose intention, at the level of the competent authorities, is based on the maintenance of civil

order, the preservation of cultural identity and the improvement of communication (Lopes, 2002: 19).

Language planning is closely related to the field of social linguistics, which studies the social forces influencing language change and the types of change motivated by these social forces. As commented appropriately by Kaplan and Baldauf Jr, (1997: 307):

If language is not understood as a social phenomenon it is practically impossible to carry out language planning, except in the most restricted sense of planning of the corpus. This is not the same as saying that the raw materials of autonomous linguistics are irrelevant (…). But planning, in terms of status, requires a very different approach in relation to the definition of the concept of language and the understanding of the inter-relationship between human populations and the language(s) used in communication with others.

Language custody

Custody of the Portuguese language belongs to each of the eight states, regions and communities which speak it. Many speakers, and not just the native speakers, take natural pride in the fact that Portuguese is recognized as an international language and expanding. In reality Portuguese is losing its more localized status, its parochialism, and is gaining international and intercontinental status, for the simple reason that the language belongs to no single state or people. By the same token, native speakers cannot claim any special rights of expression over it.

In the area of language teaching it is assumed, sometimes, that only the language and communicative competence of a native-speaking instructor will be adequate. It is assumed, then, that the native-speaking instructor is the holder of some sort of patent over what constitutes correct and appropriate speech and what constitutes adequate choice of teaching methods. I have a different take on this issue.

I think that although nativespeakers have an important intervening role, they cannot have the final say on judgements in relation to the evolution of the Portuguese language in Mozambique. The same consideration would apply to nativespeakers in Portugal, Brazil or East Timor. In reality, Portuguese is an international language because no country alone could or should claim its custodianship. A lot of nativespeakers certainly feel satisfied by the fact that Portuguese is an international means of communication. But in the process of its becoming a means of international communication, it ceased to be simply the language of a determined place or community of speakers. We are not talking about a power which is delegated to others whilst at the same time retaining certain seigneurial property rights. Other peoples also have these rights because the Portuguese language belongs to all those who use it for their daily communication and to all those who like to express themselves using it.

In diverse contexts, including those of the school, the model of the fluent non-native speaker is no less appropriate than the model of the nativespeaker who understands the situation of the non-native learner in the learning process and the strategies employed by the learner. There is no pre-determined relationship between the properties of fluency and the condition of nativespeaker. Perhaps it is necessary to demystify the concept of nativespeaker, reformulating it to serve multilingual societies in which many learners simultaneously acquire more than one

language as native tongue, it being difficult sometimes to say which is the mother tongue or primary language. What to do then? Develop a new concept which incorporates social and cultural denominators present in multilingual societies? Should we then, differently from the notion of ‘bilingual speaker’, theorize a new concept of nativespeaker in two languages?

Having put this forward, and unless I am processing it in somewhat distorted form, it becomes difficult to accept Selinker’s widely knowninterlanguagehypothesis with its seemingly ethnocentric basis, since its advocates argue that the question of norm and standard is one which belongs exclusively to the circle of native varieties. They postulate further that non-native speakers, attempting to learn the supposed norm of the exogenous standard, have difficulty reaching the ‘target’, remaining in this way at stages of the journey, which are the hallmarks of ‘interlanguage’.

It is known, however, that many people in multilingual contexts are highly successful in learning second and foreign languages. Very often in Mozambique and in many other African countries, children grow up with two or three languages simultaneously, although, in some instances, with certain limitations in various areas of linguistic, communicative and discursive competence. Thus, if we were to theorize about Mozambican Portuguese (MP) as an interlanguage, this would push us towards a context of serious theoretical and ideological implications. It is clear that there are different points of view, some with little consensus, over what MP really is. I think that MP is not an interlanguage, and that those who argue that only native variants are suitable to constitute themselves as the ‘norm’ are wrong. And while the question of the language norm and standard has not been well treated and resolved, we should move with care, imagination and within the measure of possibilities, not only in pedagogical contexts.

The theory of interlanguage is, from my point of view, a myth, and the preconceptions, stereotypes and ethnocentricity associated with it do not belong exclusively to the so-called western world, as is sometimes insinuated. But there are other related myths, including the established sociolinguistic myth of code switching. In reality, alternation in heteroglossic situations is not restricted to codes only;switching also happens in various areas such as accent, culture and religion. Applied Linguistics has not been able yet to capture the epistemological method of a world dominated by many languages, in which the speakers not only alternate in terms of code but also, and emphatically, in terms of culture.

More than a decade and a half ago, in the context of a discussion on the role of Bantu languages in Mozambique, I suggested (Lopes, 1997: 24-6) their introduction in the greatest possible number of registers, including those of judicial power, and of police power, registers in which there could occur deficiencies and insufficiencies in terms of interpersonal communicative acts. Mabasso’s reflections in this sphere are relevant here, as attested by his recent (2013) study on the phenomena of code and culture switching noted and analysed in Mozambican police stations. In this way we are able to consider, through the study of this and other contexts, the existence of a situation of code switching and of culture switching, and I would also risk adding, even identity. In sum, code switching, culture switching and identity switching. This is also more or less what happens when crossing our border to the other side.

As a general rule, and on average, when we interact with our neighbours on the other side, we change code -- from Portuguese to English or Afrikaans, or from one Bantu language to another, in most cases, until we switch back to the language of leaving, on our return. We switch in terms of various practices and cultural habits, for example, what we eat and how we eat; and sometimes, we activate a shift in acquired identity, since humans also tend to be multiple in their identities, as happens, for example, assuming a different status when in this country, a different nationality, assuming a double or even triple nationality, activating different facets of identity.

Sometimes, and according to the demands of the occasions and functions and roles carried out in a given context, there are situations where a speaker shifts from code A (e.g. Portuguese) to code B (e.g. Shangaan or to a mix of Shangaan and Xhirhonga), from code B to code C (e.g. English) and looking at the mines on the Rand, from code C to code D, for example,Fanakaló, in this way producing a network of codes.

Methodological paradigm for research

Putting aside utopian ideas, Applied Linguistics, Educational Ethnography, Sociology and Ethno-methodology all seek a paradigm which will better accept the hermeneutic dimension of the issues discussed here and those which follow from them, making the necessary links between the hermeneutic and the nomothetic. This is essential in the case of the researcher principally in Africa, or working on Africa, in which s/he has to deal with, on the one hand, non- documentary information in the form of oral tradition and history, and on the other, with information expressed in various cultural knowledges and traditions (Lopes, 1998b: ix). Even though nomothetic approaches have been adopted sometimes in Applied Linguistics, I assume I am above all a hermeneut, a version certainly not as profound as that of the sociologist Moisés de Lemos Martins, who defines it in his fascinating book Crisis in the Culture Castle:

I have spent almost all my life reading and interpreting texts. (…) Now, someone who reads texts and gives himself over to their interpretation is a hermeneut. And it is thus that I see myself, as a hermeneut. I interpret texts, not only with academic preoccupations, but equally with civic preoccupations. (Martins, 2011: 61).2

Today, as in pre-colonial and pre-literate Africa, language constitutes itself as a fundamental element for the maintenance of the association between culture and the ancestors; and there is no reason for antagonism between the written and the oral, between the abilities to know how to read and write and the abilities to know how to talk and understand speech, nor between the act of validating oral tradition and the act of promoting literacy and various literary practices.

Via the nomothetic route we observe how and why it is that the text means what it really does. We are dealing with an approach towards multiple meanings, the ambiguities and metaphors and all that is presented in the product in the form of articulated audible sounds or in the form of a printed page, as happens, for example, in the act of substituting one word or expression for another in a translation, without affecting the meaning considered most

appropriate. This methodology, nomothetics, is relatively accessible and we use it, in some form, in research.

The other methodology, hermeneutics, which is more difficult to operationalise, more complex, consists of textual evaluation,that is, how and why the text is or is not effective on its own terms, and in what measure it succeeds well, or fails. This route takes on not only interpretation of its situational and cultural contexts, but also interpretation of the relation between the language and discursive characteristics present in the text, and analysis of the context and characteristics of the ‘environment’ in which the text was produced, including possible reconstructions of the intentions of its author. Interpreting a phenomenon or event is fundamentally a personal act, and for this reason it is extremely difficult to standardize the hermeneutic method. Each hermeneutic method adjusts itself to a particular context, but its non-standardization should not be taken as license to do everyand whatever thing. We need to perfect our sensibilities in order to avoid the risk of making meaningless interpretations, a dilemma which historians and literary critics understand well, since there is no manual which adopts a single approach to learning how to do it.

On the other hand, where are the working models we need for the management of social, cultural and economic welfare? In this regard, in 1993 Mia Couto said something which still seems current to me:

For almost 15 years Mozambique was the laboratory for an original liberatory experience. Today [in 1993AJL] this experience has been smitten down by the destructive violence of a war which created a million victims.(…) Yesterday’s certainties, the ideologies of the left or the right are exhausted. It was not the East that fell. It was all the cardinal points on the compass. Africans looked outside for models to build and manage their own societies. These models proved not to work.3

Perhaps the failure should not be imputed only to the fact that the models were “imported”. But it is true that we were not able to manage reasonably the osmosis between this local knowledge and the knowledge of more universalizing theory, which is naturally and permanently “imported”. It is pertinent to ask what the role of academics has been. Are we producing, publicising and competing in the world of knowledge? What are the quality standards for research and teaching in our academy? In this respect we heed the South African intellectual, scientist and academic MalegapuruMakgoba, who is also Vice-Chancellor of the prestigious University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban:

The major part of knowledge production occurs at the level of the doctorate. It is because of this that these days the minimum qualification for working in a university is a doctorate…This minimum qualification must be accompanied by three other indispensable requirements, namely: quality academic publications, innovation in teaching and the ability to attract substantial funding. The modern academic lives, breathes and dies by these criteria. (1997:225)

Self-respecting hermeneuts and nomothetes confront orthodoxy and dogma and do not allow themselves to be co-opted either by capital or the state. It is clear, as life has taught us, that questions of power are complex. The more we analyse Michel Foucault (1982), the more we

learn that individuals who exercise power – not only ordinary individuals – are all subjected to the power from which they benefit (as the Angolan MarcolinoMoco remembered in a recent STV interview in Maputo)! The more we read about Pierre Bourdieu’s (1986) field of action and structures, the better we understand that capital, as a form of power, is not only economic, but also, relevantly, social and cultural. History is a story of shooting, flowering and fading. It is indispensable that we study the forces producing historical change, as a pattern for comprehending the nature of the power which leads Portuguese to function as a world language.

The naturalisation of language and its uses

I still consider the 1997 formulation of the concept which I designated the naturalisation of language valid and useful, namely:

Naturalisation is the acceptance and bestowal of citizenship status on a foreign language by a community of natives. This acceptance presupposes a continual adaptation of this language to new realities (indigenisation or nativisation) as well as the recognition that the use of the forms and meanings of the new non-native variety (levels of achievement) serves its functional purpose. (Lopes, 1997: 37)

When Mozambique became independent in 1975, the Portuguese language, which had previously shown itself to be pragmatic and flexible during the nationalist period, continued with the birth of the nation to demonstrate its adaptability to the Mozambican reality. And, then, at that point, it became officially naturalised with the right to a new passport.

Social and cultural factors in Mozambique have required the use of new words and expressions which we call Mozambicanisms. There is and always will be a more or less indigenous flavour about MP. In our imaginary, in our choice of words, in the nuances of meaning which we give to certain words, we always find that we are different from others. But although there is no doubt that MP exists, it is not easy to define it linguistically.

The complexity of the Mozambican situation makes any linguistic description of MP an extremely difficult, dense and complex task, always requiring, naturally, indispensable contributions from sociological, historical and anthropological research.

Various studies have already been produced by Mozambican and other academics and intellectuals on the lexical innovations of MP. However, and despite the influence of the interesting work by Cavacas (1999) on MiaCoutianproduction, a contraction I borrowed from Bastos and de Brito, I would like here to emphasise the theoretical approach which these two academics adopted in their 2011 research with respect to the element of creativity (at times, literary):

In this work, we concentrate on certain aspects of the MiaCoutianopusregarding the creativity/productivity of the Portuguese lexical system, the result of the adoption of strategies used by the writer in the act of discursive textualization. We focus on Lusophonic cultural aspects present in fragments of The kiss of the little word (O beijo da palavrinha)and of BlessedDream Stories (Estóriasabensonhadas) in relation to the incorporation of new words, which leads us to confirm that with the “old”, the understood, the “new” is built.4

The creative re-creation of words in literature is slow to catch on in current communication, but independently of this fact, I think that the new Mozambicanisms which arise in creative writing, whilst respecting the particular freedom the writer needs to fulfill his experiences, should equally integrate the MP Lexicons of Usage. They are part of the creative strategies used by Mozambican authors to create a Mozambican atmosphere in their writing, keeping the audience in mind. The artistic demands for the creative use of language are as much a part of the full use of language as their purely functional use.

There are diverse studies, by various linguists, at other levels of MP, not focusing on Lexicons of Usage.5Even though these studies are very relevant, I am of the opinion that it is in the lexicon that the changes in MP are most rapid, and that the Mozambican-ness of Portuguese is more immediately most fixed and visible. I would also argue that the Lexicons of Usage must include the imaginative use of language expressed by Mozambican writers.

The collection of the new (new words) constructed from the old is interesting, especially from a functional theory of communication perspective (Lopes, 1987). It takes us back to the Czech linguistic world of the sixties, the creative world of communicative dynamism, which is what invigoratesMiaCoutianwriting, and gives it its tonic accent in terms of the most relevant information, which it sets out to communicate. The theme, or old or given information, is the carrier of the lowest degree of communicative dynamism, while the rheme, or new information, is the element carrying most dynamism. It is interesting how the paradigm between the old and the new constitutes itself into the motor for the development of writing, and above all, of creative writing, through the incorporation of new words, which are the most dynamic, because they arise as a novelty, being holders of high levels of unpredictability against what is old, or less new.

It is always difficult to decide on the inclusion or exclusion of a determined formation -- word, expression or structure -- in a Lexicon of Mozambican Portuguese (MP) Usages.6Sometimes formations are included which, despite not being strictly Mozambicanisms, are of special and particular interest to Mozambicans. Some formations already belong in other lexicons, glossaries or dictionaries, which serve even as a corpus of exclusion; but these formations acquire a new load, including a semantic load, in their evolution towards MP. We normally call the group of this type of formations the group of codified neologisms. On the other hand, neologisms which have not been recorded anywhere, those which appear for the first time, are called uncodified neologisms.

But this traditional method of categorization raises some questions for us. How to consider words and expressions -- e.g., the struggle/the liberation struggle -- which exist in European Portuguese (EP) or Brazilian Portuguese (PB) but which, having undergone a change in original meaning, have however acquired a certain Mozambican connotation, a certain local ‘aura’? How to consider the case of codified words, apparently first arising in Portugal where some, to a certain extent, are already little used, functioning however, in Mozambique with a high frequency and where it has already a very specific meaning and Mozambican identification mark? For example, would the term matabicho(breakfast – lit.: kill the bug) not be a Mozambicanism? Or at least, also a Mozambicanism?

And what do you say about words used in different languages, almost in universal form in some cases, such as for example, ‘bazar’[bazaar],‘cipaio’[sepoy], apartheid? Are they not also Mozambicanisms? And finally, would a word like machimbombo (bus) not be aMozambicanism, because it is already recorded in Portuguese or Brazilian dictionaries?

I think the fact that a term from one of the different varieties of EP, BP or AP is already codified in Portugal, Brazil or Angola does not necessarily imply that it has lost its citizenship status, as I judge happens with machimbombo, or co-citizenship, as I believe happens with apartheid, or with a clearly localised term such as bazaar in the sense of ‘market’ [not ‘fair’ as indicated on the Novo Aurélio, even though the word exists in MP for reference, for example, totheblackwood fair]. On this question of categorization, there are formations which have acquired Mozambican connotations or aura, at times historically, but without any particular change in meaning. For example, ‘quadro’ [cadre] (not only in the EP sense, as in ‘Sindicato dos Quadros da FunçãoPública[‘Union of Civil Service Technical Personnel’), but with the MP meaning of people with technical and, above all, political training, or ‘a luta’ [the struggle] in ‘a luta continua!’[the struggle continues!], a formation which is part of the international vocabulary of the left, but with specific associations with the contexts of Mozambique and southern Africa.

The fact that a term locally considered MP or seen as such is already codified (and assumed) in Portugal, Brazil or other countries does not necessarily imply that the term or expression has lost its citizenship or co-citizenship status, as in machimbombo, balalaica (safari suit), etc. In crossing no man’s land we need to be creative to resolve problems of this type, which also touch on the realm of attitudes.

Language substitution

Mozambique is considered a multilingual, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious country of medium high language diversity (Lopes, 1999).

In the past, the level of a country’s language diversity was classified on the basis of the number of languages spoken there. More recently Robinson’s (1993: 52-5) criterion for the treatment of language diversity has been adopted, in which the hierarchy of levels of language diversity does not have to have as its basis the total number of languages in a given country, but the population percentage speaking a language taken on its own. Additionally, the author created the concept of high language diversity, having established that this dealt with cases in which a percentage no greater than 50% of the population spoke the same language.

In Africa, a continent of 54 countries, about half of these fall into this classification. The Ivory Coast is Africa’s most linguistically diverse country. It has 75 languages and Baule, the language with most speakers, has about one and a half million speakers, representing 13% of the total population which is estimated at about 12 million inhabitants. It is thus the country with the highest language diversity on the continent. On the other end of the continuum, we have Ghana with 73 languages, the country with the lowest level of language diversity. The language with the most speakers, Akan (7 million) represents 46% of the population total of Ghana (approx. 15 million). Thus, the comparison across different countries shows that the country where the

largest language represents the smallest proportion of population is considered as the most linguistically diverse.

Mozambique, in which Emakhuwa represents 25% of the total population, is notably situated in the middle of the table of those countries with a higher linguistic diversity in Africa. We could define Mozambique, then, as a country of a medium high language diversity. In this context, a growing level of literacy and schooling does not mean that language pluralism and cultural diversity is put at risk, as Mateus (2002: 73) also assumes. And much less so even with official language pluralism, when this happens in future – that is, when the Bantu languages and Portuguese are, one day, co-official languages, as I have always advocated. I see no reason for the act of gaining literacy and schooling to be antagonistic to that of valuing oral tradition. Why would it not be possible to activate concomitantly the two dimensions of reality? Giving official status to the Bantu languages would be of benefit to both the written and oral practices of these languages. And above all, we would have a democratic and balanced solution for the language question. Whatever the direction taken, the leading role of African languages can never be off the table, as NgũgĩwaThiong’o advocated, most notably in his powerful essay ‘The Language of African Literature’ in which he expounded on the psychological and cultural devastation at the heart of the post-colonial African middle and upper-middle class elite brought about through the dominance and hegemony of the old colonial languages.

As for English, and as already re-affirmed (Lopes, 2013: 141-2), I do not see how this language can endanger the desired pluralism, while key registers, such as language of schooling, administration, justice and religion remain in Portuguese or, as I propose, in Portuguese and Bantu languages.

In relation to urbanised children who tend to be monolingual, supposedly weakening the potential horizon of ahealthy language pluralism, I believe that this comes about, above all, through the type of policies and practices adopted. It would be desirable for a child to become bilingual and bi-literate in a Bantu language and in Portuguese and, gradually, to acquire further proficiency in a foreign language such as English, or also French, particularly given Mozambique’s relations with countries in the Indian Ocean region. On the other hand, I do not see a problem in the fact that a growing number of urban children are born with Portuguese as mother tongue. The problem with accepting this fact, if there really is one, lies in unilingual practices in multilingual contexts!

Sometimes, fear of the substitution of Portuguese is illustrated with reference to the Namibian case. But, in my view, in Namibia, where English is gradually dislodging Afrikaans, the two languages coexisted as official languages over the years. Despite the important place which English occupied in Mozambique until the first decades of the twentieth century, it was never used officially alongside Portuguese, and I cannot imagine how it could ever come to take its place. Any attempt to substitute English for Portuguese as medium of communication and/or medium of instruction will bring more problems than benefits to the country. The argument in favour of using English instead of Portuguese because there will be better communication with neighbouring states and the world in general, is indefensible and, at the very least, an issue for debate. It is true, however, that as the lingua franca of the Southern African Development

Community (SADC) and the language most used internationally for commerce, technology and academic exchange, English is important for Mozambique’s development.

In the last few years, the future of Portuguese in Mozambique, a joint official language of SADC along with English and French, and the possibility of it being substituted by English, has received attention both in the national and international press (Lopes, 1998ª). Apart from this, Mozambique’s joining the Commonwealth revived interest in this subject. It appears some have difficulty understanding how a former Portuguese colony could join an Anglophone community. Essentially, they are denying that the country ever had historical and cultural links with the Anglophone world and fear that the decision could, in the long term, weaken the role of the Portuguese language in the country. But there are, naturally, various historical, political and linguistic facets which show that the Anglophone and Afrikaans influences have old roots in Mozambique.

Migrant labour has been one of the most constant forms of inter-territorial relations in southern Africa. Inhabitants of the territory that would later come to be called Mozambique travelled to work in neighbouring territories, even at a time when the Portuguese presence was confined principally to a few coastal settlements.7 There are records of migrants from Mozambique in the English colonies of the Cape and Natal in the mid-nineteenth century. The discovery of diamonds in Kimberley in 1867 and of gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886 resulted in an increased demand for labour and the subsequent recruitment of emigrant workers.

Following the 1884/85 Conference of Berlin, new territorial units – the European colonies – displaced the independent African states and chiefdoms. Military campaigns in Mozambique led to the implantation of the first colonial administrative structures. The Portuguese government facilitated, in particular, the emigration of workers from the south of Mozambique to the English colonies and the Boer republics. In 1896 the government initiated contacts with the Chamber of Mines, giving rise to an agreement over a system for the recruitment of migrant labour from Mozambique. At the time of the 1899-1902 Anglo-Boer War there were 80,000 Mozambicans from the southern region working in the Transvaal. The labour force coming from the Zambezi Valley and the north of Mozambique was also exported, not only to the Transvaal, but also to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and Nyasaland (now Malawi). But the British influence in Mozambique also arose through the concession of vast areas of territory by the Portuguese authorities, and through the use of transport networks, particularly the railway lines to and through the hinterland. Access to the coast in order to facilitate seaborne links between the hinterland and the outside world soon turned into a focus of ambition and dispute between Portugal, the Transvaal and England.

In the field of language, traces of English are evident in all the languages spoken in Mozambique, including Portuguese. Cabral (1975) recorded many words borrowed or adapted from English into Mozambican Bantu languages. For example, adaptations such as ‘xipenete’ (Xhirhonga) for ‘pin’; ‘chileti’ (Shangaan) for ‘slate’; ‘sitolo’ (ChiChopi) for ‘store’; ‘baseni’ (Chinyanja) for ‘basin’; ‘tia’ (Chitswa) for ‘tea’; ‘pukhu’ (Emakhuwa) for ‘book’; ‘picha’ (Kiswahili) for ‘picture’; ‘machese’ (Chiyao) for ‘matches’; ‘boora’ (Chinyungwe) for ‘to bore’; ‘xitimela’ (Chisena) for ‘steamer’; ‘njinje’ (Gitonga) for ‘change’. It is also clear there are many

words in the Bantu languages, borrowed from Portuguese. Sometimes, two borrowings for the same item are recorded, one from English and the other from Portuguese: ‘esokisi’ and ‘emeya’ in Emakhuwa for ‘socks’ and ‘meias’, respectively; it is also interesting to note the evolution in meaning of a word over time, as Magaia (1997) does: ‘steamer’ gave rise to ‘xitimela’ (train), because the first locomotives were steam-driven; ‘gas’ resulted in ‘guesi’ (electricity), because the first public street lighting was gas-powered.

Thus, the linguistic argument can also be used to refute the idea that English has no tradition in Mozambique. Even some patronymic names provide evidence of how English influenced male Mozambican miners in the past. The origin of names such as ‘Faife’ (five), ‘Fiftin’ (fifteen), ‘Siquisse’ (six), ‘Nayene’ (nine), etc., bring back sorry memories of the days when miners were rarely addressed by their names, but instead by their registration number or a digit which represented their team function.

About two hundred million Portuguese speakers throughout the world have turned the language into a multi-centric and dynamic tongue, creating forces which are exerted in all directions in the heart of its broad ecological system. Portuguese in Mozambique is not an isolated part of this ecological system, in which alliances and relationships between its speakers and the immersive world are established and reinforced. Portuguese is, indeed,a necessarily part of a complex ecological system, which spreads through the African states and communities speaking it, and involves states and communities in Europe, America and Asia which also use it. It is, thus, a language which keeps its speakers continuouslyawakened and communicating with each other through its intermediary. Taking a Samorian idiom which he applied to culture, and transposing it to the Portuguese language, with the necessary license and adaptation, I can say it is a sun which never sets.

Language death

The question of the official status of languages cannot be ignored in any study of language revitalization in Africa. Genuine language revitalization requires looking in this direction for a solution to this problem, the ultimate objective being the satisfaction of basic human needs for development, which should also include the right of citizens to use their mother tongues in official situations.

Native languages lacking official or co-official status within a multilingual context are languages which tend to disappear, which tend to die! (Lopes, 2001). And certainly the eventual disappearance of a large part of humanity’s linguistic heritage would lead to the collapse of, and render meaningless, any theory of language planning. In the year 2000 the Maputo Municipal Assembly unanimously adopted the principle of promoting the use of Xhirhonga, an important language in the capital city. It was decided, then, to adopt Xhirhonga as one of the working languages in plenary sessions and in commissions, with the aim of encouraging residents to participate in the life of the municipality.

What does the promotion of Xhirhonga mean, more specifically? It means that a resident of Maputo wanting to deal officially with the Municipality in Xhirhonga can do so, with the

Municipality assuming the organisational and budget responsibility to make available interpretersor translators. In addition, Xhirhonga has now become a working language in the different sections of the Municipal Council. On the other hand, any citizen speaking another Bantu language and wishing to use it in dealings with the Municipality can do so once the necessary interpretation has been provided. This development marked a real shift at the local level, with national implications for the language and social context of the country. Xhirhonga began to enjoy greater prominence in its region, with a more balance psychological status in relation to Shangaan and Portuguese. Preserving a language, in this case Xhirhonga, is really a part of re-establishing confidence and dignity in traditional knowledge and capacities at the heart of the Xhirhonga community. Unfortunately, the initiative has not seen the desired rate of implementation, despite their appearing to have been the desire to move ahead.

On the fringes of Lusophony

The promotion of Xhirhonga at the municipal level is extremely important to save the language from possible extinction through ‘atrophy’ in the face of Portuguese or through ‘dilution’ in relation to Shangaan. Xhirhonga and Shangaan belong to the same language group in the heart of the Bantu language family, enjoying considerable mutual intelligibility. The development of this language and cultural experience and the potential spreading of the Maputo municipal experiment to other municipalities in the country will certainly reveal other issues of a different nature which are also interesting for the theory of language planning itself, which is permanently being made and re-fashioned.

Apart from the anti-economic argument for multilingual policies, as with the promotion of minority languages, such as the case ofXhirhonga, there are populist positions which argue that it is anti-democratic to use citizen’s money, that is tax-payers’ money, to finance cultural products which are only likely to be of interest to minorities. Positions of this type are, in my view, indefensible because they result in immobility and acertain hostility towards the fundamental value of humanity. Apart from their de-mobilizing consequences, what Bamgboṣe (2000: 46) calls avoidance strategies -- I prefer to call them a language policy led by a culture of silence, in which nothing happens, neither pronouncement nor implementation -- the policies are indefensible because they ignore the values of cultural and political democracy which are, essentially, pluralism, diversity, inclusiveness and the fundamental human freedom, which is the freedom to choose, as Melo emphasises:

The more a cultural medium seeks to close in on itself, the more it weakens and annuls itself. For this reason it is necessary to have an open and cosmopolitan political culture which has as one of its characteristics the international affirmation of creative activity and dynamic global cultural participation. Cosmopolitanism and international openness are the only effective form of defence for local cultural practices. (2002: 151)8

Or, still in relation to these values, as put by S. Whittaker, from Windhoek, in a recent letter sent to the editor of the South African weekly newspaper the Mail & Guardian: (7-13/06/2013):

The fact is that the political elite in southern Africa is made up of ‘blacks’ who are the co-managers of capital. The Marikana [mining area, AJL] tragedy showed that this ruling elite behaves like any other elite. We should remember the unforgettable words of Amilcar Cabral: ‘We do not want any form of exploitation in our countries, not even by black people’.

Recalling Neville Alexander, Whittaker argued that possible advances by the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) [even though he questioned whether the BCM or African nationalism was not really a class-in-itself] should move on to debate the notions of class-in-itself and class-for-itself associated with the theme of non-racialism, which for him:

...provides a theoretical escape from the divisiveness of post-modernist identity politics. In fact the ideal of non-racialism – for which Alexander struggled hard – (…) included [in the context of the South African debates, AJL] all of humanity.

It is not difficult, with more or less luminous intensity, to shed light on the fringes which explain the Mozambican language policy status quo: 1. The fear that an official multilingual policy will prejudice the process of nation-building under way, and threaten national unity; 2. The fear of giving official status to languages considered insufficiently developed as yet; and 3. The fear that an official multilingual language policy will turn out to be difficult to manage, thus running into costly scenarios.

Such fears are not surprising; we live with fears all our lives. What we did and must continue to do was and should be to confront them, overcoming the dangers and phantoms underlying them. The argument that national unity in a multilingual country requires monolingual planning and policy is, in my opinion, a myth, since in the same way that ecology shows that biological survival is essentially possible through a variety and multiplicity of forms, why is that official multilingual policies (including Arab and the Asiatic-origin languages spoken originally by Mozambicans) make nations necessarily more vulnerable and more easily destroyed? The argument that the introduction of a type of official multilingual policy would be premature because the Bantu languages are not yet sufficiently developed is another myth. Kiswahili in Tanzania and Afrikaans in South Africa were not particularly developed when they acquired official language status in their respective countries. Krio in Sierra Leone, which was originally a small language in terms of the number of speakers, became a large and developed lingua franca, through acts of deliberate promotion. The argument about economic costs also appears to me too as not very defensible, since each language is equally economical for the group speaking it. Or,in sum, leaning again on AlexandreMelo, and his reflection on the contiguity between the politics of inclusion and the politics of cultural diversity:

The tendency towards diversity is only prejudiced when the enlargement of the area of supply of a particular good implies the disappearance of one or the other good which it is coming to substitute. In that case there occurs not only a diminution of diversity but also a loss to the global cultural heritage. (Melo, 2002: 43)9

The antagonisms of the global world are nothing more than conflictual contiguities, rather than our seeing them as social and political contradictions. We always end up going back to José

Craveirinha from whom it seems apt to recall the following passage from an early text (‘Race consciousness’) published in the Weekly O BradoAfricano [The African Shout](6/11/1954), when he referred to what he considered to be an absence of a culture of African expression in Mozambique and what he understood to be necessary to do, namely:

…not to abdicate from a native culture, nor to renege upon a European current, when from such a graft could arise an integral improvement in the richness of the rhythm of expression of a literary form (1954).10

And further regarding the position that globalisation is not the beginning of the suppression of differences, Craveirinha recalls the cry of the Senegalese poet, Senghor: ‘Why not unite our two clarities in order to banish all the shadows?’ (Craveirinha, 1954)11

It is obviously impossible to conceive of and attempt to implement a programme in which all the Bantu languages and others would be contemplated at the same time. If the planners are not realistic and if, above all, planning quality is not sound, any and whatever programme attempted will be condemned to failure from the start. As could certainly happen in other countries of the Community of Portuguese-Language Countries (CPLP), a multilingual policy for Mozambique needs to be conceived and implemented in a calm fashion, phased, and with clear functions for each language or group of languages. It will be necessary to plan gradually and carefully, not only for the needs of communication but also for reasons which address the rationalization of resources. In my view, until now arguments of a restricted type have formed a considerable part of the discussion which I think we are having about the contours of a broad Lusophony. Naturally, there have been various interventions in this respect12, but I think that Bastos e de Brito’s perspective (2011: 145) is the one which most appropriately advances what could eventually constitute a point of departure for the definition of the notion of Lusophony, namely:

…Lusophony is a symbolic linguistic, and above all, cultural space within the ambit of the Portuguese language and its varieties which, on a geo-linguistic level, encompasses the countries which adopt Portuguese as mother tongue (Portugal and Brazil) and official language (Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe and Guinea-Bissau --the African Countries with Portuguese as Official Language (PALOP) and East Timor. However, Lusophony cannot be restricted to spaces defined by national boundaries. In this way of conceiving of Lusophony, many communities spread throughout the world have to be considered (…). This synthesis of the Lusophone world -- which one seeks to bring together in a notion of Lusophony-- aims to reconcile language and cultural diversities and affinities with the unity which structures the Portuguese language system.13

Considering the possibility that, in future -- and in line with what I propose and believe -- official language policies will cease to be monolingual, then the fault involving the designation of the Potuguese-speaking African countries, as it appears in the citation above, would obviously disappear. There will be no more PALOPs! References of the type ‘Portugal, Brazil and the PALOPs’ will disappear at the same time as the ‘palopians’ will become citizens who aspire to what their units would like to be, collectively or individually! What awaits is what should be expected from the diplomats. They are also paid by citizens to think about and find ways to resolve these issues. Incidentally, designations such as ‘Luso-Afro-Brazilian Congress’ have no meaning, and do not dignify researchers’ events and intellectual output. How can one start with a

singular specification and integrate a continental space of more than a thousand million people, living in about 30 million square kilometres? Mozambique, on its own, not having such a large surface area, despite its almost 3,000 km of coastline, could contain within it France, England, Portugal and also Swaziland!

In a note I wrote a short while ago, I suggested that in the CPLP there were no Timorese, Portuguese or Angolan women. Nor European, Latin-American or African women. Nor women from any GPS coordinates. The CPLP [see-pee-elpee-an] woman (for want of a better term) already lives in no-man’s land! With all their attributes – and insuperably intuition, dedication and creativity, the women of the Community should sit around the table and agree on the outlines and contours of the concept of Lusophony.

It is clear that sitting around a table would only happen after the planning territory had been crossed. The problem lies in the difficulty of free circulation at the point of entry and in the territory. I am not referring to the holders of red or green passports, from whom is also expected the obligatory and moral contribution towards solving the circulation problem of fellow citizens using the common passport, which is blue, in the Mozambican case. It is that these last ones have to go through an experience which the poor world citizen knows the meaning of: a visa is needed. With the visa in mind, as I have observed, I do not see how one can come to speak, effectively, of a real Community and of an assumed Lusophony! And we are very probably miles from the Passport of the Heart which Leite carries, that free transit passenger who not even the strangeness of language perturbs…travelling a road she does not know, because everything she learnt is not enough…(2002: 46-7)14.

At the level of the Southern African community (SADC), in which thirteen of the fifteen countries have English as the official or co-official language, Mozambicans travel freely without any visa. Construction of a one-stop border post between Ressano Garcia and Komatipoort is in progress, as well, exactly the places this text travels through. The two stops necessary now for entry and exit stamps will soon become one only. Ironically a visa is needed for travel from Mozambican to Angolan space and vice-versa. There is no point in producing arguments behind arguments on the difficulties and complexities of intercontinental travel within the space where Portuguese is spoken. Paraphrasing the celebrated journalist SalomãoMoyana, those governing us are paid with citizens’ money to think about and find solutions, not to produce justifications. Free circulation in the large southern African region, including in and across the richest country in the continent, which is our neighbour South Africa, brought no problems whatsoever of unexpected or undesired migrant flows from Mozambique to that powerful nation, situated only a little more than 90 km from Maputo. It is clear that through the CPLP the economy could turn into an important locomotive for Lusophony, but happening in this way it will unfortunately be an orphan economy, because it has not got with it the effort of its citizens, its languages and its cultures, which will not be healthy.

Conclusion

I conclude where I began. No man’s land.

Renouncing seigneurial property rights, in favour of internationalism and cosmopolitanism;

overcoming fears of the substitution of a language of wider communication for another;

understanding the alchemy of varieties;

overcoming exclusions whatever they might be; and

contributing so that no language dies, or wastes away,

we are, thus, more prepared to situate ourselves in no man’s land, where women already reside. With bags and baggage, with all the symbolism of transformation of relations which this idiom encloses.

From there, from no man’s land, for the crossing towards the planning side -- that of language planning -- to be calm and productive, one cannot be conditioned by something so excluding, in SADC terms,that they put in the form of a visa into a travel document. If such a situation persists, one will continue crossing the border but stripped of his soul.

The new phenomenon of a modern technological era, whose tools were not available to the formal structures of power and knowledge in the past, requires study and decisions. As we know, all knowledge is produced in the context of a determined configuration of social, cultural, economic, political and historical circumstances, and thus reflects and reproduces these conditions. On the other hand, knowledge is associated with interests, since the search for knowledge represents the interests of specific individuals or groups.

As far as myths go, we should study their sociological function, as the selfsame phenomena which support and sustain a certain social order. Studying Portuguese as an international language and its sociological functions offers us some challenging research areas which could allow us to better understand a message in symbols, such as nationalism, internationalism and the power of language.

Interacting with different languages and cultures, and in the same way, interacting with the same language and different cultures is very useful because these interactions provide different perspectives from our own and free us from preconceptions which are, very often, culturally conditioned. The Portuguese language was never a problem in Mozambique. Neither was English. In this context, it is fundamental to study the historical processes which moulded and continue to mould the Mozambican linguistic, social and cultural contexts. The complementary role of Portuguese and the Bantu languages is far better understood and accepted by society, in general, but this role has not yet been well formulated by theorists. There is more work for Government, the universities and other agencies, since language planning remains inadequate. Portuguese, which is not essentially the language of agriculture in Mozambique, is however the language of instruction in the faculties of agronomy, because modern knowledge of agriculture is available in Portuguese and other languages. This language, which is not,

essentially, the language of business in the dumbanengues and tchungamoios -- the informal markets -- is however the language of management courses at Mozambican institutes. Portuguese, which alternates with Bantu languages in many factories, is the language of instruction at industrial schools and technology centres.

On the 25th of April 1993, armed with data on the type of use made by Mozambican readers at the Portuguese Embassy in Maputo’s Cultural Services Library, I presented a paper at the University of California, Los Angeles symposium ‘Portugal and the Age of Discoveries’. It was entitled “The Age of Re-discovery: The Portuguese language in Mozambique”, the data for which was provided me by José Capela (baptismal name José Soares Martins), at the time the Cultural Attaché, but much more than this because his personal trajectory is closely linked to the memory of the recent history of our two peoples. I quote the following passage from the paper (published in 1995):

The fact that everyone is eager to learn how to draw a map of camaraderie, by way of rediscovering a new role for Portuguese as a language of unity between nations and communities and as a language of dynamic interaction in multilingual contexts is a necessary and unavoidable sign of our new Age. And in honour of the Portuguese language of the past, present and the future, the Monument we forgot should be erected. (Lopes, 1995: 85)

And what is there to add today?Perhaps a living cultural centre-museum in each country of the Community in honour of

Lusophony so that free citizens can visit them, without entry visas, and there think about and debate our now and our tomorrow.

Finally, and without wanting to re-edit the Age of Discoveries, I would like to thank Minho for the opportunity of having discovered Moisés and his willingness to read and think about the world, even the nearly invisible country to which I belong and from whence I come. Thank you very much.

Notes1O estado é simultaneamente o objectivo final do movimento nacionalista e o instrumento para a construção da nação que, consequentemente, deve ter uma natureza multicultural. A política linguística vem assim substituir os processos violentos que levaram à formação das actuais línguas universais e línguas eurásicas. Ela é um elemento fundamental na validação e defesa do multiculturalismo como alternativa nacional. 2Tenho passado quase toda a minha vida a ler e a interpretar textos. (…) Ora, quem lê textos e se entrega à tarefa de os interpretar é um hermeneuta. E é assim que eu me vejo, como um hermeneuta. Interpreto textos, não apenas com preocupações académicas, mas igualmente com preocupações cívicas.3Moçambique foi durante quase 15 anos laboratório de uma experiência libertadora original. Hoje [em 1993AJL] essa experiência se ajoelhou perante a violência destruidora de uma guerra que já fez um milhão de vítimas.(…) As certezas de ontem, as ideologias de esquerda ou de direita esgotaram-se. Não foi o Leste que tombou. Foram todos os pontos cardeais. Os africanos procuraram fora modelos para a construção e gestão das suas sociedades. Esses modelos têm provado não servirem.4Centramo-nos, neste trabalho, em alguns aspectos da obra miacoutiana, no tocante à criatividade/produtividade do sistema lexical da língua portuguesa, resultante da aplicação de estratégias utilizadas pelo escritor no ato da textualização discursiva. Fixamo-nos em aspectos culturais lusófonos presentes em fragmentos de O beijo da palavrinha e de Estórias abensonhadas, relativamente à incorporação de palavras novas, o que nos leva à confirmação de que com o “velho”, o aprendido, constrói-se o “novo”.5Notably by P. Gonçalves, with various works on MP, above all at the microlinguistic level.6da Silva, R.C. (2009) Do léxico à possibilidade de campos isotópicos literários. Tese de Doutoramento (não publicada), Universidade do Porto. Dias, H. (2002) Minidicionário de Moçambicanismos. Maputo: Ed.,autora. Lopes, A.J, Sitoe, S. e

Nhamuende, P. (2002) Moçambicanismos: Para Um Léxico do Português Moçambicano. Maputo: Livraria Universitária. Machungo, I. (2001) Neologisms in Mozambican Portuguese – a morphosemantic study. Tese de Doutoramento (não publicada), University of Gana, Legon. Mendes, I. (2000) O Léxico no Português de Moçambique(Aspectos Neológicos e Terminológicos). Maputo: PROMÉDIA. 7In the 19th century, these settlements were found along the coastline, as in the case of Mozambique Island, the Quirimba Islands, Quelimane, Sofala, Inhambane and Lourenço Marques, and in the interior as with Sena, Tete and Zumbo. 8Quanto mais um meio cultural pretender fechar-se sobre si próprio, mais se enfraquece e anula. Por isso se impõe uma política cultural aberta e cosmopolita que tenha como uma das suas prioridades a afirmação internacional dos criadores e a participação dinâmica cultural global. O cosmopolitismo e a abertura internacional são a única forma eficaz de defesa e promoção das práticas culturais locais.9A tendência para a diversidade só é prejudicada quando o alargamento da área de oferta de um determinado bem implica o desaparecimento de um outro bem que aquele passa a substituir. Aí, sim, existe não apenas uma diminuição da diversidade mas também uma perda para o património cultural global. 10…não abdicar de uma cultura indígena, nem renegar uma corrente europeia, quando de tal enxerto pode surgir uma beneficiação integral na riqueza do ritmo expressional duma forma literária.11Porque não unir as nossas duas claridades a fim de suprimir todas as sombras?12Baptista, M.M. (2000) O conceito de lusofonia em Eduardo Lourenço: Para além do multiculturalismo ‘pós-humanista’. Comunicação ao II seminário internacional ‘Lusografias’, Univ. de Évora, 11/2000. Bastos, N. (org.) (2010) Língua Portuguesa: Cultura e Identidade Nacional. São Paulo: IP-PUC-SP; EDUC. Bastos, N. (org.) (2006) Língua Portuguesa: Reflexões Lusófonas. São Paulo: EDUC. Cezerilo, L. (2005) Obra Poética de José Craveirinha e Eduardo White: Utopia e Liberdade no Horizonte do Possível. Maputo: Imprensa Unicersitária, UEM. Couto, M. (2010) Luso-aphonies, la lusophonie entre voyages et crimes. In Et si Obama était africain? Paris: Chandeigne.; de Brito, R. e Bastos, N. (2006) Dimensão semântica e perspectivas do real: Comentários em torno do conceito de lusofonia. In Martins, M. etal. (orgs) (2006).; do Rosário, L. (2007) Lusofonia: Cultura ou ideologia? Comunicação ao IV simpósio internacional da língua portuguesa, Maputo, 05/2007. Fiorin, J.L. (2010) Língua portuguesa, identidade nacional e lusofonia. In Bastos (org.) (2010). Gonçalves, P. (2012) Lusofonia em Moçambique: Com ou sem glotofagia? Comunicação ao II congresso internacional de Linguística Histórica, São Paulo, 02/2012. Honwana, L.B. (2009) A rica nossa cultura. Savana, 10/06/2009. Leite, A.M. (2003) Literaturas Africanas e Formulações Pós-Coloniais. Lisboa: Edições Colibri. Lopes, A.J. (2012) A minha concepção a respeito da lusofonia. Ndhaneta. Lourenço, E. (1999) Cultura e Lusofonia ou os Três Anéis: A Nau de Ícaro seguido de Imagem e Miragem da Lusofonia. Lisboa: Gradiva. Martins, M. (2006) A lusofonia como promessa e o seu equívoco lusocêntrico. In Martins, M. et al. (orgs) (2006) Comunicação e Lusofonia: Para uma Abordagem Crítica da Cultura e dos Media. Porto: Campo das Letras. Namburete, E. (2006) Língua e lusofonia: A identidade dos que não falam Português. In Bastos, N. (org.) (2006). Ngomane, N. (2012) Lusofonia: Quem quer ser apagado? SOL, 06/01/2012. Noa, F. (2002) Império, Mito e Miopia. Lisboa: Editorial Caminho.13…a Lusofonia é um espaço simbólico linguístico e, sobretudo, cultural no âmbito da língua portuguesa e das suas variedades que, no plano geo-sociopolítico, abarca os países que adotam o português como língua materna (Portugal e Brasil) e língua oficial (Angola, Cabo Verde, Moçambique, São Tomé e Príncipe e Guiné-Bissau - os Países Africanos de Língua Oficial Portuguesa (PALOP) - e Timor-Leste. No entanto, não se pode restringir a lusofonia ao que as fronteiras nacionais delimitam. Nesse modo de conceber a lusofonia, há que se considerar as muitas comunidades espalhadas pelo mundo (…). Essa síntese do mundo lusófono – que se procura reunir numa noção de lusofonia – pretende conciliar diversidades e afinidades linguísticas e culturais com a unidade que estrutura o sistema linguístico do português.14…tal passageira de livre trânsito a quem nem a estranheza das línguas perturba…percorrendo um caminho que não sabe, porque tudo o que aprendeu não lhe chega…

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