Immigration and glotocide: the sunset of a general language

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on the external history of South of Bahia’s general language, presenting the hypothesis on how its disappearance would have occurred: with the beginning of the prosperity of cocoa plantation – in the old Captainships of Ilheus and Porto Seguro –, there was a strong inlander immigration movement towards the region that we are treating about, causing the conflict between inlanders (mainly males, known as “jagunços”) and natives (Indians, Mamelukes and impoverished Whites) who struggled for the cocoa lands’ ownership, having as consequence the genocide of these last ones and the respective glotocide, determining the disappearance of South of Bahia’s general language, while Portuguese language was introduced in the region, already re-structured in its Brazilian variety.