Guinea-Bissau Creole

Guinea-Bissau Creole
Kiriol, Crioulo
guinensi, kriyol, kiriol, purtuguis 'kriolo'
Native toGuinea-Bissau, Senegal, The Gambia
Native speakers
L1: 350,000 (2013–2022)[1]
L2: 1.5 million (2013–2022)[1]
Portuguese Creole
  • Afro-Portuguese Creole
    • Upper Guinea Creole
      • Guinea-Bissau Creole
Language codes
ISO 639-3pov
Glottologuppe1455
Linguasphere51-AAC-ab
Election signs in Guinea-Bissau Creole.

Guinea-Bissau Creole, also known as Kiriol or Crioulo,[2] 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,[3] kriyol,[4] or portuguis.

Guinea-Bissau Creole is spoken as a native tongue by 250,000 Bissau-Guineans[citation needed] and as a second language by 1,000,000.[citation needed]

A variant of Guinea-Bissau Creole is also spoken in southern Senegal, mainly in the region of Casamance, a former Portuguese colony, which is known as Portuguis Creole or Casamance Creole. Creole is the majority language of the inhabitants of the Casamance region and is used as a language of commerce.[5]

Standard Portuguese is the official language of Guinea-Bissau, but Guinea-Bissau Creole is the language of trade, informal literature and entertainment. It is not used in either news media, parliament, public services or educational programming.[6]

  1. ^ a b Guinea-Bissau Creole at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
  2. ^ Benson, Carol (2003). "Possibilities for educational language choice in multilingual Guinea-Bissau". In Huss, Leena; Camilleri Grima, Antoinette; King, Kendall (eds.). Transcending Monolingualism: Linguistic Revitalization in Education. Swets & Zeitlinger. pp. 67–88. ISBN 1134380828.
  3. ^ Scantamburlo, Luigi (2019). Dicionário do Guineense (2a. ed.). Lisboa: Colibri. ISBN 9789896898106. OCLC 1091114509.
  4. ^ Kihm (1994)
  5. ^ Horta, José (12–25 April 2006). "A Língua Portuguesa no Senegal" [Portuguese language in Senegal] (in Portuguese). Instituto Camões. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
  6. ^ Intumbo, Incanha, Situação Sociolinguística da Guiné-bissau [Sociolinguistic Situation in Guinea-Bissau] (PDF) (in Portuguese), archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-12-18, retrieved 2014-12-21