Cape Verdean Creole () is a Portuguese-based creole language spoken on the islands of Cape Verde. It is the native creole language of virtually all Cape Verdeans and is used as a second language by the Cape Verdean diaspora.
The creole has particular importance for creolistics studies since it is the oldest living creole. It is the most widely spoken Portuguese-based creole language.
Name The full formal name of this creole is Cape Verdean Creole ( in Portuguese, in Cape Verdean Creole), but in everyday usage the creole is simply called ‘Creole’ ( in Portuguese, in Cape Verdean Creole) by its speakers. The names Cape Verdean ( in Portuguese, in Cape Verdean Creole) and Cape Verdean language ( in Portuguese, in Cape Verdean Creole) have been proposed for whenever the creole will be standardized.
Origins
The history of Cape Verdean Creole is hard to trace due to a lack of written documentation and to ostracism during the Portuguese administration of Cape Verde.
There are presently three theories about the formation of Cape Verdean Creole.Santos, C., "Cultura e comunicação: um estudo no âmbito da sociolinguística" The monogenetic theory claims that the creole was formed by the Portuguese by simplifying the Portuguese language in order to make it accessible to enslaved African people. That is the point of view of authors such as Prudent, Waldman, Chaudenson and Lopes da Silva. Authors such as Adam and Quint argue that Cape Verdean Creole was formed by enslaved African people using the grammar of Western African languages and replacing the African lexicon with the Portuguese one. Linguists such as Chomsky and Bickerton argue that Cape Verdean Creole was formed spontaneously, not by enslaved people from continental Africa, but by the population born in the islands, using universal grammar.
According to A. Carreira,Carreira, A. (1982) Cape Verdean Creole was formed from a Portuguese pidgin, on the island of Santiago, starting from the 15th century. That pidgin was then transported to the west coast of Africa by the lançados. From there, that pidgin diverged into two proto-creoles, one that was the base of Cape Verdean Creole, and another that was the base of the Guinea-Bissau Creole.
Cross-referencing information regarding the settlement of each island with the linguistic comparisons, it is possible to form some conjectures. The spreading of Cape Verdean Creole within the islands was done in three phases:Pereira, D. (2006) In a first phase, the island of Santiago was occupied (2nd half of the 15th century), followed by Fogo (end of the 16th century). In a second phase, the island of São Nicolau was occupied (mostly in the 2nd half of the 17th century), followed by Santo Antão (mostly in the 2nd half of the 17th century). In a third phase, the remaining islands were occupied by settlers from the first islands: Brava was occupied by people from Fogo (mostly in the beginning of the 18th century), Boa Vista by people from São Nicolau and Santiago (mostly in the 1st half of the 18th century), Maio by people from Santiago and Boa Vista (mostly in the 2nd half of the 18th century), São Vicente by people from Santo Antão and São Nicolau (mostly in the 19th century), Sal by people from São Nicolau and Boa Vista (mostly in the 19th century).
Status In spite of Creole being the first language of nearly all the population in Cape Verde, Portuguese is still the official language. As Portuguese is used in everyday life (at school, in administration, in official acts, in relations with foreign countries, etc.), Portuguese and Cape Verdean Creole live in a state of diglossia,Duarte, D. A. (1998) and code switching occurs between the creole and standard Portuguese in informal speech. Due to this overall presence of Portuguese, a decreolization process occurs for all the different Cape Verdean Creole variants.
Check in this fictional text: Santiago variant:
São Vicente variant: . Translation to Portuguese:
Translation to English: That woman with whom I met yesterday was worried because she forgot her children at school, and when she went to look for them she didn't see them. Someone reminded her that her children were needing some material for a project, and so she found them at the library looking for what they needed. To thank everyone who helped her, she started speaking, saying how she was glad from the bottom of her heart.
In this text, several cases of decreolization / Portuguese intromission can be noted: ku ken / ke kenPortuguese order of words com quem; nkontra / nkontráPortuguese lexicon, in Creole it would be more commonly atxa / otxá; priokupadaPortuguese lexicon, in Creole it would be more commonly fadigada; purki / purkePortuguese lexicon, in Creole it would be more commonly pamodi / pamode; ses mininus / ses mninsPortuguese influence (plural marker on both words); prokura-s / prokurá-sPortuguese lexicon, in Creole it would be more commonly spia-s / spiá-s; olia-s / oliá-sPortuguese phonetics (intromission of the phoneme ); ki / kePortuguese lexicon, the integrant conjunction in Creole is ma; sa-ta prisizaba / tava ta prisizáPortuguese lexicon, in Creole it would be more commonly sa-ta mesteba / tava ta mestê; u-ki / u-keintromission of Portuguese o que; gradesi a / gradesê awrong preposition, the Portuguese preposition "a" does not exist in Creole; falathis form (from contemporary Portuguese falar) is only used in São Vicente and Santo Antão, in the other islands the word is papiâ (from old Portuguese papear); kómu / kómintromission of Portuguese como; kurasãuPortuguese phonetics (reduction of the phoneme to and Portuguese pronunciation instead of Creole );
The same text "corrected": Santiago variant:
São Vicente variant:
As a consequence there is a continuum between basilectal and acrolectal varieties.
In spite of Creole not being officialized, a 2005 government resolutionResolução n.º 48/2005 (published in the Boletim Oficial da República de Cabo Verde No. 46 of 14 November 2005, pages 1242–1243) put forth the necessary conditions for the officialization of Creole, which in turn has been superseded by a 2015 resolution.Resolução n.º 32/2015 (published in the Boletim Oficial da República de Cabo Verde No. 25 of 15 April 2015, page 817) This officialization has not yet occurred, mostly because the language is not yet standardized, for several reasons: There is significant dialectal fragmentation. Speakers are reluctant to speak a variant that is not their own. Absence of rules to establish which is the right form (and also the right spelling) to be adopted for each word. For example, for the word corresponding to the Portuguese word algibeira ("pocket"), A. FernandesFernandes, A. N. Rodrigues (1969) records the forms aljibera, ajibera, albijera, aljubera, aljbera, jilbera, julbera, lijbera. Absence of rules to establish which are the lexical limits to be adopted. It is frequent for speakers of Creole, when writing, to join different grammatical classes.Pereira, D., «Pa Nu Skrebe Na Skola » For ex.: pam... instead of pa N... "for me to...". Absence of rules to establish which are the grammatical structures to be adopted. It is not just about dialectal differences; even within a single variant there are fluctuations. For ex.: in the Santiago variant, when there are two sentences and one is subordinated to the other, there is a tense agreement in the verbs (bu kria pa N daba "you wanted me to give"both kria and daba are past tense), but some speakers do not practice it (bu kria pa N dapast then presentor bu kre pa N dabapresent then past). The writing system (ALUPEC) has not been well accepted by all Creole users. The language levels (formal, informal, scientific, slang, etc.) are not well differentiated yet.
That is the reason why each speaker when speaking (or writing) uses their own dialect, their own sociolect, and their own idiolect.
To overcome these problems, some Creole advocatesVeiga, M. (2000) propose the development of two standards: a North (Barlavento) standard, centered on the São Vicente variant, and a South (Sotavento) standard, centered on that of Santiago. If so, Creole would become a pluricentric language.
There exists no complete translation of the Bible. However, the "Asosiason Kabuverdianu pa Traduson di Bíblia" was established with the goal of translating the entire Bible in Kabuverdianu-Sotaventu and Kabuverdianu-Barlaventu.see https://web.archive.org/web/20161002192858/http://aktb.org/ They have translated approximately 40% of the New Testament in the Kabuverdianu-Sotaventu, and they have published Luke and Acts. The publication of Luke has won two awards in Cape Verde. Sérgio Frusoni translated Bartolomeo Rossetti's version of the Romanesco Italian poem Er Vangelo Seconno Noantri, which is a poem based on the Four Gospels. Frusoni translated the poem in the São Vicente Creole, Vangêle contód d'nôs móda.
Writing system
The only writing system officially recognized by the authorities in Cape Verde is called the Alfabeto Unificado para a Escrita da Língua Cabo-verdiana (ALUPEC, ), which was approved for official use on an experimental basis in 1998 by Decree-Law No. 67/98.Decreto-Lei n.º 67/98 (published in the Boletim Oficial da República de Cabo Verde – 1998) In 2009, Decree-Law No. 8/2009 officially institutionalized the use of the ALUPEC.Decreto-Lei n.º 8/2009 (published in the Boletim Oficial da República de Cabo Verde No. 11 of 16 March 2009, pages 74–76) In spite of having been officially recognized by the government, the ALUPEC is neither required nor mandatorily used.
In spite of being the only system officially recognized, the same law allows the use of alternative writing models, "as long as they are presented in a systematic and scientific way". As not all users are familiarized with ALUPEC or the IPA, in this article a slightly different system will be used to make it easier for the reader: The sound will be represented in an etymological way ("s" when in Portuguese is "s", "ss" when in Portuguese is "ss", "c" when in Portuguese is "c", "ç" when in Portuguese is "ç") instead of ALUPEC always "s". The sound will be represented in an etymological way ("s" when in Portuguese is "s", "z" when in Portuguese is "z") instead of ALUPEC always "z". The sound will be represented by "tch" instead of ALUPEC "tx". The sound will be represented in an etymological way ("x" when in Portuguese is "x", "ch" when in Portuguese is "ch") instead of ALUPEC always "x". The sound will be represented in an etymological way ("j" when in Portuguese is "j", "g" when in Portuguese is "g") instead of ALUPEC always "j". The sound will be represented in an etymological way ("c" when in Portuguese is "c", "qu" when in Portuguese is "qu") instead of ALUPEC always "k". The sound will be represented in an etymological way ("g" when in Portuguese is "g", "gu" when in Portuguese is "gu") instead of ALUPEC always "g". The nasality of the vowels will be represented by an "m" after the vowel, when this vowel is at the end of the word or before the letters "p" and "b". In the other cases the nasality will be represented by the letter "n". The words will always have a graphic accent. This will be an overwhelming use of accents, but it is the only way to effectively represent both the stressed syllable and vowel aperture. To show an elided vowel in certain variants an apostrophe will be used.
Vocabulary
The vocabulary of Cape Verdean Creole comes mainly from Portuguese. Although several sources do not agree, the figures oscillate between 90 and 95% of words from Portuguese. The remaining comes from several languages from Western Africa (Mandingo, Wolof, Fulani, Temne, Balanta, Mandjak, etc.), and the vocabulary from other languages (English, French, Latin) is negligible.
Phonology