REGIONAL VARIANT OF PORTUGUESE LANGUAGE IN MACAU IN THE CLASSIFICATION OF ASIAN VARIANTS OF PORTUGUESE

Grigoreva Olga Igorevna

This article is devoted to the problem of the existence of Portuguese language in the regions of South, East and Southeast Asia. Here the Portuguese language is represented in three main variants: Portuguese of India (Goa), of East Timor and of China (namely, Macau). The existence of Pan-Asian Portuguese is also noted, and it is emphasized that along with the Asian variants of the Portuguese language, Luso-Creole languages were and some still are widespread in this area. Particular attention in the article is paid to the local variant Portuguese language in Macau. The article seeks to define the variant of Portuguese in Macau as regional variant. The main purpose of this paper is to examine a possible classification of variants of Portuguese in Asia and the place of Macanese variant of Portuguese in it.

Keywords:variants of the Portuguese language; Asia; Macau; regional variant; standard; status