Abstract
Dr Stephen Parkinson
Portuguese into Bengali: Loanwords and Lexicography
This paper reports on a project to identify and analyse Portuguese loanwords in Bengali, codirected by myself and Prof Aditi Lahiri. To verify the claims of Portuguese influence we need to
consider phonological evidence, in particular the features which demarcate Portuguese loans
from English loans, and lexicographical evidence to confirm the date of entry of the word into
Bengali and its prior existence in Portuguese. Some putative loans turn out to predate
Portuguese contact, and others emerge only in the 19th century, when Portuguese had long
been supplanted by English. Two early Portuguese lexicographical works (an 18 th-century
Bengali-Portuguese-dictionary, and a manuscript Portuguese-Bengali lexicon presumed to be
its source) provide further evidence, as well as a worm’s eye view of Portuguese missionaries
learning Bengali.