Guinea-Bissau Creole
Guinea-Bissau Creole ( Kriol , Kiriol , Kriolu ) | ||
---|---|---|
Spoken in |
Guinea-Bissau Senegal |
|
speaker | 483,400; 600,000 as a second language | |
Linguistic classification |
Creole
|
|
Language codes | ||
ISO 639 -2 |
cpp |
|
ISO 639-3 |
pov |
The Guineabissauische Creole (proper name Kriol , KIRIOL or Kriolu varying with the dialects; crioulo da Guiné in Portuguese ) is the lingua franca of the West African country of Guinea-Bissau .
It is a Portuguese-based Creole language and is very closely related to Cape Verde Creole on Cape Verde . Kriolu is now spoken by an estimated 15% (206,000) of Guinea pigs as their mother tongue, and as a second language by around 46% (600,000); it is also spoken in parts of Senegal , primarily as a commercial language. Portuguese itself has been the only official language of Guinea-Bissau since the Portuguese colonial times , although it is not spoken regularly by a large part of the population.
Upper Guinea Creole languages are the oldest Portuguese-based Creole languages in Africa, which first appeared around the Portuguese settlements along the northern coast of West Africa. Bissau-Guinean Creole is therefore one of the first Portuguese Creole languages. Portuguese traders and settlers immediately began to mingle with the West Africans; this became a rule among Portuguese explorers and the main reason for the large number of Portuguese Creole languages in the world. A small body of settlers called lançados ("the Vorandringer") began to spread the Portuguese language further and to influence locals through marriage.
There are three main dialects of this Creole language in Guinea-Bissau and Senegal:
- Bissau and Bolama
- Bafatá
- Cacheu - Ziguinchor
The substrate languages of the Creole are the languages of the local peoples: Mandingas , Manjacos , Pepéis , Mancagne and others, but most of the vocabulary (about 80%) comes from Portuguese.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Ethnologue