Paper short abstract:

The relation between language and society sets the grounds for a cohesive community. The assimilation of Portuguese, as a second language, by Angolans, has been a slow and difficult process. We want to show in this paper the importance of Contrastive /Differential Linguistics in the teaching of Portuguese in Angola.

Paper long abstract:

The relation between language and civil society is sets the grounds for a cohesive community and a solid notion of national identity. During colonial times and up to present Portuguese is taught as a mother tongue which causes serious methodological problem in its teaching.

When we refer to teaching Portuguese as a second language we must consider the communication needs of the students and not the statistics that refer to the number of speakers who do not know or use a Bantu language. These are not necessarily speakers of Portuguese as a first language for this reason. If such premise can be accepted for certain writing skills, it does not work in the majority of social contexts of our population. In most educational contexts it is better to use a second language methodology even of the official statistics suggest otherwise. In reality, most of the population communicates through a hybrid language, not European Portuguese, but also through a Bantu Language. Such hybridity is intergenerational. It constitutes a communication system based on Portuguese lexicon and Bantu grammar.