This post is part of our special coverage Languages and the Internet. May 5, 2011, was a day to celebrate Portuguese Language and Culture, as established by the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) at the XIV CPLP Council of Ministers held in Cape Verde, in 2009. The Portuguese language was brought to the uninhabited Cape Verde islands, by the first settlers five centuries before, in 1460. Though the Portuguese language is official in the country today, the national language is Cape Verdean Creole, which has nine varieties of Portuguese-based Creole, and these are the mother tongues of the population spread across nine islands that make up the country, independent since 1975. A recent speech by the Minister of Culture of Cape Verde, Mario Lucio Sousa, in Parliament stated [pt] the need “to make the Cape Verdean language official, as envisaged by the Constitution, pairing with the Portuguese language.” Anti-drug poem in Creole. Photo by the artist Joel Bergner, coordinator of the Global Mural Project "Action Ashe!" (used with permission) Language and social spaces The linguist Manuel Veiga points out the difference between “the linguistic status of the two languages” on the blog Sibila [pt]: (…) enquanto a Lp [Língua Portuguesa] é língua oficial e do ensino, da literatura, dos mídia e das situações formais de comunicação, o Ccv [Crioulo cabo-verdiano] é língua de comunicação na família, língua das tradições orais, principal suporte musical, numa palavra, língua da oralidade e das situações informais de comunicação. Veiga goes further, mentioning in another article, that the politics of language in education favours the rich, who master the Portuguese language. Despite government efforts to promote Cape Verdean Creole in the country, Veiga says [pt]: Para ter efeitos a longo prazo, uma política de oficialização teria de ser acompanhada por uma vasta implementação de condições estruturais direccionadas para a valorização do estudo e do uso do crioulo em todos os campos sociais. The social role of Creole [pt] in education, particularly its adoption in primary and secondary schools, and also in religion, is often discussed, as was in the International Mother Language Day on 21 February, when the Comissão Nacional de Cabo-Verde (National Commission of Cape Verde), linked to the Instituto Internacional de Língua Portuguesa (International Portuguese Language Institute), hosted a debate on the issue and ended with a screening of the movie [pt] “Jesus” translated into Cape Verdean Creole. Screbê Kriolu (Write Creole) (…) alguns puristas da língua portuguesa começaram a considerar o CCV como meio de comunicação sem regras nem gramática; como mixórdia que não se pode escrever e que não tem importantes letras do alfabeto, como L de lei, R de rei, F de fé. Por tudo isto, o CCV constituía, no dizer deles, um perigo para a unidade do império. The above quote is taken from the opening note of the blog KrioLUS [pt], from the University of Cape Verde. A few months before Cape Verde ratified the Reform of the Portuguese Ortography, in 2009, the Unified Alphabet for Cape Verdean Writing (ALUPEC) was adopted, aiming to establish an official standard for the language spoken in the archipelago, despite the variations of each island. Diglossia: texts in Portuguese and Creole, Mindelo, Sao Vicente, Cape Verde. Photography of Francisco Santos with Creative Commons 3.0 In the comments section of an article on the approval of the ALUPEC [pt], opinions were divided concerning its formalization and implementation. Marta Velozo believed that: Merecem palmas todas as ações que lutam pela diversidade cultural As for Pedro V, “the ALUPEC is an aberration”: Mostra um complexo do colonizado porque rejeita a origem portuguesa da nossa língua.