The 122 words that sailed back with Vasco da Gama from Calicut

In 1498, when Vasco da Gama’s fleet dropped anchor off Calicut, they stepped into a bustling, multilingual port city that had been trading with world for centuries. What they carried back, tucked into a manuscript now held in Portugal, is one of most intimate records of that encounter: list of 122 words in Portuguese, translated into “language of Calicut”—coastal Malayalam.