The Portuguese and the Indians spoke Genoese to each other

The year is 1498: Vasco da Gama’s ships reach Kozhikode – present-day Calicut – on the Malabar Coast of India. The first exchanges are made possible by two remarkable interpreters: two Moors from Tunis who, as the sailor Álvaro Velho notes in his account of the expedition, the Roteiro da viagem de Vasco de Gama, «sabiam falar castelhano e genovês» – they could speak Castilian and Genoese.

At the other end of the world, the language of Genoa was common currency: centuries of Mediterranean trade had made it a lingua franca that a Tunisian interpreter had every reason to know. The history of our language passed through there too, in the first exchange of words between Vasco da Gama’s Europe and India.