Academic hopes to see young people interested in Patuá

Alan Baxter

The University of Saint Joseph’s (USJ) Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Associate Professor Alan Baxter will be lecturing for the first Macau Creole Portuguese (Patuá) course opened to the public.
In response to a question about the course, which will start on February 22, Baxter told the Times that he is hoping to see more young people involved and interested in Patuá. “I would
like to see some young people interested in the language. That would be fantastic!” he said.

According to information from Baxter, the course is to be run under the University’s Lifelong Education Program, which currently has approximately 12 enrolled students from various age groups, a number which the academic finds “quite interesting” due to the limited time given to promoting the course, especially as it was during the Chinese New Year season.

Baxter clarified the misconception that the course was a Patuá language-learning course, explaining: “It’s a course about Patuá, but it’s not so much to teach Patuá – although of course, this will happen as a byproduct for certain individuals.”

“The idea of putting the course together was actually a good opportunity of a way to have actual people from the Macanese community involved, participating and contributing with whatever they know according to the experience or contact they’ve had. At the same time, it gives the opportunity for those interested in the question of the language to participate,” the professor said. He anticipates that people will receive from the course “a deeper knowledge of the social-linguistic aspects of Patuá in the past, its development and bits and pieces of its grammar and its vocabulary.”

He added that the course “may lead people actually to want to do more and I think that’s a fundamental issue. I would like to see continuity.”

Expanding on the idea of continuity, Baxter highlighted the need to have people that “want to do more” as he thinks that “learning more than the language is important to strengthen its position as a part of Macau’s social-cultural heritage.”

The lecturer acknowledged that he does not have much information on the background of enrolled students, but he did remark on the need to appeal to younger individuals as, “we have seen through other forms that more and more younger people are getting interested in Patuá and I also feel that there is more interest in the language.”