Cultural heritage and multilingual understanding through lexical archives (chamuça)

Abstract

CHAMUÇA (Cultural HeritAge and Multilingual Understanding through lexiCal Archives) is a pioneering initiative aimed at exploring the impact of the Portuguese language on Asian languages, rooted in the historical exchanges between Portuguese traders, colonists, and diverse Asian cultures. The impact of these interactions extends beyond historical remnants to the modern-day lexicon of Asian languages, which includes a diverse array of Portuguese borrowings, ranging from general vocabulary units to specialised units. We aim to detail the initiative’s current status, its goals, and the methodology it employs. Additionally, it will outline the essential steps required for organising and structuring the knowledge embedded within and associated with the borrowings. CHAMUÇA, an innovative open-source resource designed to document and study these Portuguese linguistic contributions, will augment the pool of structured lexical data and support cross-linguistic analysis, using state-of-the-art frameworks such as OntoLex-Lemon and TEI Lex-0 to structure the lexical data. Following FAIR principles – ensuring data is fndable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable – CHAMUÇA is poised to contribute to linguistic borrowings, cultural interchange, and the preservation of linguistic heritage. Furthermore, the project will encourage community involvement and scholarly collaboration to evolve and enrich its contents, leveraging collective expertise to illuminate the nuances of language contact phenomena.