Cape Verdean Creole

Linguists like 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 the grammar with which all human beings are born; this would explain how creoles located many miles apart have similar grammatical structures, even though they have a different lexical basis.

According to A. Carreira,[7] Cape Verdean Creole was formed from a Portuguese pidgin, on the island of Santiago, starting from the 15th century.

As Portuguese is used in everyday life (at school, in administration, in official acts, in relations with foreign countries, etc.

Due to this overall presence of Portuguese, a decreolization process occurs for all the different Cape Verdean Creole variants.

However, the "Asosiason Kabuverdianu pa Traduson di Bíblia" was established with the goal of translating the entire Bible in Kabuverdianu-Sotaventu and Kabuverdianu-Barlaventu.

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, lit.

'Unified Alphabet for the Writing of the Cape Verdean Language'), which was approved for official use on an experimental basis in 1998 by Decree-Law No.

[citation needed] 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 vocabulary of Cape Verdean Creole comes mainly from Portuguese.

The remaining comes from several languages from Western Africa (Mandingo, Wolof, Fulani, Temne, Balanta, Mandjak, etc.

In terms of innovative features, the phoneme /ʎ/ (written "lh" in Portuguese) has evolved to /dʒ/ and the vowels have undergone several phonetic phenomena.

This pronoun comes from the object form of the first person singular in Portuguese mim, and it is phonetically reduced to the sound [m].

For example: m' andâ [n̩ ɐ̃ˈdɐ] ('I have walked'), m' stâ tâ sintí [n̩ stɐ tɐ sĩˈti] ('I am feeling'), m' labába [n̩ lɐˈbabɐ] ('I had washed').

: m' bêm [m bẽ] ('I came'), m' têm [n tẽ] ('I have'), m' tchigâ [ɲ tʃiˈɡɐ] ('I arrived'), m' crê [ŋ kɾe] ('I want').

Speakers who are strongly influenced by the Portuguese language tend to pronounce this pronoun as a nasal vowel úm [ũ] instead of m' [m].

: In some cases the distinction between sexes is made putting the adjectives mátchu "male" and fémia "female" after the nouns.

They have the same form for all the persons, and the notions of tense, mood and aspect are expressed through the presence (or absence) of certain morphemes (called "verbal actualizers" by Veiga[14]), as in the majority of creoles.

: cantába /kɐ̃ˈtabɐ/, mexêba /meˈʃebɐ/, partíba /pɐɾˈtibɐ/, compôba /kõˈpobɐ/, *lumbúba /lũˈbubɐ/ (in the Barlavento variants, the particle for the past ~va (or ~ba) is joined to the imperfective actualizer, and not to the verb).

It is important to mention that in the Santiago variant, the stress goes back to before the last syllable in the present tense forms of the verbs.

Therefore, we have: cánta /ˈkãtɐ/ instead of cantâ /kɐ̃ˈtɐ/, mêxe /ˈmeʃe/ or mêxi /ˈmeʃi/ instead of mexê /meˈʃe/, pârti /ˈpɐɾti/ instead of partí /pɐɾˈti/, cômpo /ˈkõpo/ or cômpu /ˈkõpu/ instead of compô /kõˈpo/, búmbu /ˈbũbu/ instead of bumbú /bũˈbu/.

In the pronominal forms, however, the stress remains on the last syllable: cantâ-m' /kɐ̃ˈtɐ̃/, mexê-bu /meˈʃebu/, partí-'l /pɐɾˈtil/, compô-nu /kõˈponu/, bumbú-'s /bũˈbuz/.

: In spite of Cape Verde's small size, each island has developed its own way of speaking Creole.

Each of these nine ways (there are 10 islands, one of which is uninhabited) is justifiably a different dialect, but the scholars in Cape Verde usually call them "variants".

From a linguistic point of view, the most important variants are the Fogo, Santiago, São Nicolau and Santo Antão ones, and any deep study of Creole should approach at least these four.

They are the only islands that have received slaves directly from the African continent, that possess the most conservative linguistic features, and that are the most distinct from each other.

From a social point of view, the most important variants are the Santiago and São Vicente ones, and any light study of Creole should approach at least these two.

One of the least spoken being seventh place and one of the firsts to have written literature, in which Eugénio Tavares wrote some of his poems.

It is spoken primarily in the São Vicente island, but also in a large segment of the Cape Verdean diaspora population.

Pâ térra lôngi Bêm cába pâ nôs Bô cú már, cêu í bús fídju N' úm dôci abráçu dí páz Excerpt of the lyrics of Dôci Guérra from Antero Simas.

The full lyrics may be found (with a different orthography) in CABOINDEX » Blog Archive » Doce Guerra.