Portuguese and Creole live in a state of diglossia, meaning that Portuguese is typically used in formal situations, in the media, business, education, judicial system and legislature, while Creole is preferred for informal situations as a vernacular language in day-to-day life and daily activities.

Nevertheless, there are some empiric concepts about what is "correct" or "incorrect" concerning the way of speaking, resulting from: Another interesting phenomenon is that, if by one side the Portuguese in Cape Verde has developed some specificities, on the other side, during the years of colonization the paradigmatic models were from European Portuguese, and the reference works (grammars, dictionaries, school manuals, etc.)

Cape Verde has participated on the works towards the elaboration of the Acordo Ortográfico — with a delegation composed of the linguist Manuel Veiga[3] and by the writer Moacyr Rodrigues — and has ratified the document.

In 1998 Cape Verde was the host of the II CPLP Summit, held in Praia, where the first “Protocolo Modificativo ao Acordo Ortográfico da Língua Portuguesa” was signed, which removed from the original text the original date of enforcement (1994).

Cape Verde has ratified this document, as well as the “Segundo Protocolo Modificativo” (April 2005), being the second country (after Brazil) to complete the entire procedure for the enforcement of the Spelling Agreement.