The Portuguese era marked the end of medieval Sri Lanka and the beginning of modern Sri Lanka. It changed the island’s orientation away from India and gave it a unique identity moulde
d by almost 500 years of Western influence due to the presence of three successive European powers : the Portuguese (1505-1658), the Dutch (1658-1796) and the British (1796-1948). The Portuguese cultural imprint can be analysed by examining: (a) those who claim Portuguese descent (the Portuguese Burghers), (b) those who do not claim Portuguese descent but who follow the Roman Catholic faith, (c) those who are neither of Portuguese descent nor follow the Catholic faith but nevertheless underwent a sociocultural transformation. Language is a necessary element in the set of culture. The other elements are subjective and could include religion, food, dress, music and dance.
The interaction of the Portuguese and the Sri Lankans led to the evolution of a new language, “Sri Lanka Portuguese Creole”, which flourished as a lingua franca in the island for over three and a half centuries (16th to mid-19th). Ceylon Portuguese was a prominent language and the mother tongue of the Portuguese Burgher communities and the first administrative language of Ceylon. Pidgins and Creoles are contact languages; they evolve when people who do not speak each other’s mother-tongue come into contact. Pidgins only survive as long as the interlingual contact lasts and are generally short-lived. The etymon of Pidgin is business. A Creole is a Pidgin which has become the mother-tongue of a speech community. Sri Lanka Portuguese Creole, a subset of Indo-Portuguese (the Portuguese Creole that flourished in coastal India), has been the solution to the inter-communication problems that arose when the Portuguese and Sri Lankans came into contact. In Sri Lanka, miscegenation reinforced the Creole as the mestiços (offspring of a Portuguese father and a Sri Lankan mother) were bilingual – they were proficient in the Creole and Sinhala or Tamil. Boxer (1961: 61) comments that the Eurasians (mestiços), or even slave women, kept alive the use of the Portuguese language in places like Batavia, Malacca and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), during the time of Dutch control following the Portuguese. Not to forget the separate court system that was followed for the Portuguese Burghers in the East during this time.
