# Historical records of African languages  
The fact that Creole languages did not form in the majority of Latin American countries does not mean that African languages were not spoken in Latin America, or that they have disappeared from use. They have remained in certain contexts, and there are records of their vitality in the past.  
There are two works - one from the seventeenth and one from the eighteenth century - that can be taken as historical landmarks of the presence of African languages in Brazil.  
The first text is the work entitled Arte da lingua de Angola, oeferecida a virgem Senhora N. do Rosario, mäy e Senhora dos mesmos pretos, by Pedro Dias of the Companhia de Jesu (as it appears on the title page). This work was published in Lisbon in 1697 by Miguel Deslandes, his Majesty's printmaker, but written in Brazil, in Salvador. Its author was of Portuguese origin but had lived in Brazil since his childhood. He was a Jesuit, lawyer and doctor. His 48-page text is a grammar of the Quimbundo language spoken in Salvador by enslaved Africans from Angola. It is believed that there were a great number of them - indeed, Father Vieira speaks of some 23,000 Africans catechized in the language of Angola in the 1660s. This text was intended to facilitate the work of the Jesuits tasked with handling these Africans, with the aim of helping them to learn the language, since there was still no grammar of Quimbundo. Pedro Dias finished his grammar in 1694 and instructed the Jesuit Miguel Cardoso, born in Angola and fluent in the language, to revise it before it was published in 1697 (Petter, 2006, p. 127).