Bruna Frascolla
Brazil's slavery was uniquely Portuguese - shaped by centuries of African contact, Arab loanwords, and a legal system where manumission was common.
This month, while discussing my article "Transatlantic Slavery and Africa's Influence on Europe" with Spanish speakers, I discovered that the Portuguese word alforria (manumission) is not used in Spanish. I swapped this word of Arabic origin for manumisión, derived from Latin, and was understood.