Lusophone?

Do you know what Lusophone means?

First: it is *not* a new kind of cellular phone service or type of telecommunications equipment.

Background: I was updating information for one of the folks working on the International Linguistics Center campus into the "people" database based on their hand-written input. Their information previously indicated that their area of service/expertise was "Francophone Africa". The update indicated it should now indicate "Anglo- and Lusophone Africa". I wasn't positive how the "Lusophone" was spelled (the hand-writing could have spelled out "Lugophone" instead), and since I wasn't sure, I decided I should try looking it up.

Given "Francophone Africa" - which means French-speaking countries/areas of Africa, and "Anglophone Africa" (English-speaking areas), I figured it had something to do with a language, but, which language would be "Luso"?

To give you more to think about, I found that the name is derived from "Lusitania" which is the name of the Roman province where this language originated.

I only knew Lusitania from the name of the ship, Lusitania -- and I couldn't remember much about it except that I thought something happened in World War I involving it. Looking it up, I found that the RMS Lusitania was a British passenger ship sunk by German U-boat in 1915, and its sinking had a large impact of turning the opinions of the American people against Germany.

RMS Lusitania: After being launched in 1906, she was on her 202nd ocean crossing when she was sunk -- in less than 9 years, she crossed the Atlantic over 200 times. The Lusitania and her sister ship Mauretania made crossings between the UK and US - making the transit in about 5 days, covering 560-590 miles each day.
more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Lusitania

So, where was that Roman province, Lusitania?
From Wikipedia:

Lusitania (/ˌluːsɪˈteɪniə/) or Hispania Lusitana was an ancient Iberian Roman province located where modern Portugal (south of the Douro river) and part of western Spain (the present autonomous community of Extremadura and a part of the province of Salamanca) lie. It was named after the Lusitani or Lusitanian people (an Indo-European people). 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lusitania

So, Lusophone Africa would be Portuguese-speaking areas in Africa... I'll send you back to Wikipedia to get the countries included:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lusophone#Officially_Lusophone_countries

By the way, other than Francophone (French) and Anglophone (English) and Lusophone (Portuguese), do you know of any other "classic compound" words with "-phone" as the suffix?

As I was doing my research, I also found Hispanophone (Spanish) and Sinophone (Chinese). In case you're interested, there are areas of Africa that are Hispanophone (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanophone#Africa) but no Sinophone (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinophone#Demographics). However, if you follow that Sinophone Demographics link, you'll find that it references the 2013 version of the Ethnologue that I blogged about a few days ago! (http://trekincartwrights.blogspot.com/2019/09/ethnologue-part-1.html)

I hope you've enjoyed your serving of language (with a side order of history) for today! I enjoyed learning about it!