Portuguese creoles are creole languages whose lexical base is mainly derived from Portuguese. The oldest of them, Cape Verdean Creole, appeared at the end of the 15th century, while the more recent ones, such as Malacca Creole or Diu Creole, developed in the 17th and 18th centuries in the former Asian trading posts of the Portuguese empire.
Guinea-Bissau Creole, also known as Kiriol or Crioulo, is a creole language whose lexicon derives mostly from Portuguese. It is spoken in Guinea Bissau, Senegal and The Gambia. It is also called by its native speakers as guinensi, kriyol, or portuguis.
Guinea-Bissau Creole is spoken as a native tongue by 250,000 Bissau-Guineans and as a second language by 1,000,000.
Papiamento (English: /ˌpæpiəˈmɛntoʊ, ˌpɑː-/) or Papiamentu (English: /-tuː/; Dutch: Papiaments [ˌpaːpijaːˈmɛnts]) is a Portuguese-based creole language spoken in the Dutch Caribbean. It is the most widely spoken language on Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao (ABC islands).
The language, spelled Papiamento in Aruba and Papiamentu in Bonaire and Curaçao, is largely based on Portuguese as spoken in the 15th and 16th centuries, and has been influenced considerably by Dutch and Spanish. Due to lexical similarities between Portuguese and Spanish, it is difficult to pinpoint the exact origin of some words. Though there are different theories about its origins, most linguists now believe that Papiamento emerged from the Portuguese-based creole languages of the West African coasts, as it has many similarities with Cape Verdean Creole and Guinea-Bissau Creole.
Guinea-Bissau, officially the Republic of Guinea-Bissau, is a country in West Africa that covers 36,125 square kilometres (13,948 sq mi) with an estimated population of 2,026,778. It borders Senegal to its north and Guinea to its southeast.
Guinea-Bissau was once part of the kingdom of Kaabu, as well as part of the Mali Empire. Parts of this kingdom persisted until the 18th century, while a few others had been under some rule by the Portuguese Empire since the 16th century. In the 19th century, it was colonised as Portuguese Guinea. Upon independence, declared in 1973 and recognised in 1974, the name of its capital, Bissau, was added to the country's name to prevent confusion with Guinea (formerly French Guinea). Guinea-Bissau has had a history of political instability since independence. About 2% of the population speaks Portuguese, the official language, as a first language, and 33% speak it as a second language. Guinea-Bissau Creole, a Portuguese-based creole, is the national language and also considered the language of unity. According to a 2012 study, 54% of the population speak Creole as a first language and about 40% speak it as a second language. The remainder speak a variety of native African languages. The nation is home to numerous followers of Islam, Christianity, and multiple traditional faiths. The country's per capita gross domestic product is one of the lowest in the world.
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.
Portuguese is spoken in a number of African countries and is the official language in five African countries: Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe, Angola and Mozambique. It also has official status in Equatorial Guinea, where it is a minority language spoken in the province of Annobón. There are Portuguese-speaking communities in most countries of Southern Africa, a mixture of Portuguese settlers and Angolans and Mozambicans who left their countries during the civil wars. A conservative estimate is that there are about 19 million people who use Portuguese as their sole mother tongue across Africa and approximately 35.5 million total speakers, but depending on the criteria applied, the number might be considerably higher. Drawing upon census data provided by the PALOP (Portuguese-speaking African nations), especially the 2014 Angolan census and the 2017 Mozambican census, one may arrive at a rough projection of 33.5 million native speakers (27.5 million Angolans - 71% of the population; 5.88 million Mozambicans - 16.5% of the population; 143.000 Santomenses; 5.850 Guineans and 11.800 Cape Verdeans) and total (L1+L2) 49 million speakers (27.5 million Angolans, 20.48 million Mozambicans and 1.3 million in other CPLP and neighbouring African countries). Indeed many Africans speak Portuguese as a second language, in countries like Angola and Mozambique, where Portuguese is an official language, but also in countries like South Africa and Senegal, thanks to migrants coming from Portuguese-speaking countries.
Africa is, therefore, the continent with the second-most Portuguese speakers in the world, only behind the Americas. Like French and English, Portuguese has become a post-colonial language in Africa and one of the working languages of the African Union (AU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Portuguese co-exists in Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, and São Tomé and Principe with Portuguese-based creoles (Upper Guinea and Gulf of Guinea Creoles), but Portuguese continues to be the official language of these countries.