Africa
The oldest Portuguese-based creole are the so-called Crioulos of Upper Guinea, born around the Portuguese settlements along the northwest coast of Africa. Originally spoken on a wider area, they are presently reduced to the following branches:
- Guinea-Bissau Creole (Kriol): lingua franca of Guinea-Bissau, also spoken in Casamance, Senegal and in Gambia.
- Cape Verdean Creole (Kriolu, Kriol): a dialect continuum spoken on the islands of Cape Verde, with some decreolization.
Another group is spoken in the Gulf of Guinea, in São Tomé and Príncipe and Equatorial Guinea:
- Angolar (Ngola, N'góla): in coastal areas of São Tomé Island.
- Annobonese (Fá d'Ambô): in Annobón Island.
- Forro: in São Tomé.
- Principense (Lunguyê) (almost extinct): in Príncipe Island.
Many other Portuguese creoles probably existed in Africa, especially in the Congo region and former Portuguese feitorias in the Gulf of Guinea.
Portuguese pidgins still exist in Angola and Mozambique, uncreolized. A Portuguese pidgin, known as Simple Portuguese, is still used as lingua franca between distinct Angolan tribes.
Portuguese Creoles are the mother tongue of Cape Verde (it also has a largest number of standard Portuguese speakers) and Guinea-Bissau's population.
Read more about this topic: Portuguese-based Creole Languages
Famous quotes containing the word africa:
“Day by day we hear the cry of AFRICA FOR THE AFRICANS. This cry has become a positive, determined one. It is a cry that is raised simultaneously the world over because of the universal oppression that affects the Negro.”
—Marcus Garvey (1887–1940)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“Are you there, Africa with the bulging chest and oblong thigh? Sulking Africa, wrought of iron, in the fire, Africa of the millions of royal slaves, deported Africa, drifting continent, are you there? Slowly you vanish, you withdraw into the past, into the tales of castaways, colonial museums, the works of scholars.”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)