The Portuguese and the Indians Spoke Genoese to Each Other

May 1498: Vasco da Gama’s ships reach Kozhikode – Calicut – on India’s Malabar coast. The first conversations are made possible by two remarkable interpreters: two Moors of Tunis who, notes the sailor Álvaro Velho in his Roteiro of the expedition, "sabiam falar castelhano e genovês" – knew how to 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 first exchange of words between Vasco da Gama’s Europe and India ran, in part, through Genoese.