Lebanon

During the summer of 2006, I was a student at the Portuguese School at Middlebury College. It was there that I read an article about a village in Lebanon which stated over 99% of the people there in Sultan Yaaqoub spoke Portuguese. At first, I could not believe it! This is when I wrote the author of the article, Roberto Khatlab- and thus started my journey with the Lebanese Emigration Research Center at Notre Dame University.



I became so interested in this topic that I decided to write about language contact between Arabic and Portuguese for my dissertation at the University of Texas at Austin. I was not able to go to Lebanon at that time because of the political situation so I decided to concentrate my efforts in Brazil at this time. I researched the contact of Arabic and Portuguese in Sao Paulo. I interviewed over 60 people from different backgrounds and asked them questions about the circumstances in which they use both Arabic and Portuguese. I met so many wonderful Lebanese- Brazilians when I was in Brazil. They opened their homes to me and allowed me to learn more about their language and culture. After conducting these interviews, I wanted even more that ever to go to Lebanon. It was a dream come true to finally be able to have the opportunity to visit and conduct interviews the first week of June.


The hospitality that I received there was overwhelming! I met so many people that were willing to share their stories and were eager to welcome me to their country. I had a chance to meet not only children and grandchildren of Brazilians- but also first generation Brazilian immigrants- which will be the topic of my next article.