Portuguese creoles () are creole languages which have Portuguese as their substantial lexifier. The most widely-spoken creoles influenced by Portuguese are Cape Verdean Creole, Guinea-Bissau Creole and Papiamento.
Origins
Portuguese overseas exploration in the 15th and 16th centuries led to the establishment of a Portuguese Empire with trading posts, forts and colonies in Africa, Asia and the Americas. Contact between the Portuguese language and native languages gave rise to many Portuguese-based pidgins, used as linguas francas throughout the Portuguese sphere of influence. In time, many of these pidgins were nativized, becoming new stable creole languages.
As is the rule in most creoles, the lexicon of these languages can be traced to the parent languages, usually with predominance of Portuguese;
These creoles are (or were) spoken mostly by communities of descendants of Portuguese, natives, and sometimes other peoples from the Portuguese colonial empire.
Until recently creoles were considered "degenerate" dialects of Portuguese unworthy of attention. As a consequence, there is little documentation on the details of their formation. Since the 20th century, increased study of creoles by linguists led to several theories being advanced. The monogenetic theory of pidgins assumes that some type of pidgin language — dubbed West African Pidgin Portuguese — based on Portuguese was spoken from the 15th to 18th centuries in the forts established by the Portuguese on the West African coast. According to this theory, this variety may have been the starting point of all the pidgin and creole languages. This may explain to some extent why Portuguese lexical items can be found in many creoles, but more importantly, it would account for the numerous grammatical similarities shared by such languages, such as the preposition na, meaning "in" and/or "on", which would come from the Portuguese contraction na, meaning "in the" (feminine singular).
Origin of the name
The Portuguese word for "creole" is crioulo, which derives from the verb criar ("to raise", "to bring up") and a suffix -oulo of debated origin. Originally the word was used to distinguish the members of any ethnic group who were born and raised in the colonies from those who were born in their homeland. In Africa it was often applied to locally born people of (wholly or partly) Portuguese descent, as opposed to those born in Portugal; whereas in Brazil it was also used to distinguish locally born black people of African descent from those who had been brought from Africa as slaves.
In time, however, this generic sense was lost, and the word crioulo or its derivatives (like "Creole" and its equivalents in other languages) became the name of several specific Upper Guinean communities and their languages: the Guinean people and their Kriol language, Cape Verdean people and their Kriolu language, all of which still today have very vigorous use, suppressing the importance of official standard Portuguese.
Concise list
Upper Guinea
Cape Verdean Creole: Vigorous use, Cape Verde Islands. Guinea-Bissau Creole: Vigorous use. Lingua franca in Guinea-Bissau, also spoken in Casamance, Senegal. Growing number of speakers. Papiamento: Official language in Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao. Although situated in the Caribbean, it belongs to this language family. It has a growing number of speakers. Gulf of Guinea Angolar: A heavy substrate of Kimbundu, spoken on São Tomé Island, São Tomé and Príncipe. Annobonese: Vigorous use. Spoken on Annobón island, Equatorial Guinea Forro: Forro is becoming the language of social networks. Spoken on São Tomé Island, São Tomé and Príncipe. Principense: Almost extinct. Spoken on Príncipe Island, São Tomé and Príncipe. Indo-Portuguese Indo-Portuguese Indo-Portuguese Malabar–Sri Lankan Portuguese, grouping Sri Lankan Portuguese, Battilocan Portuguese, Malabar Indo-Portuguese. Spoken in the coastal cities of Sri Lanka and Malabar, India. Northern Indo-Portuguese Daman and Diu Portuguese, spoken in Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, India. (old decreolization) Korlai Indo-Portuguese, spoken in Korlai, India. Southeast Asian Macanese: Spoken in Macau and Hong Kong, China. (old decreolization) Malayo-Portuguese Kristang: spoken in Malaysia and emigrant communities in Singapore and Perth, Western Australia. Português de Bidau: extinct.