The most well-known creole language is probably Haitian Creole, which also happens to be the world’s most widely spoken creole. But it’s far from the only one—creoles can be found all over the world, particularly in Africa and the Caribbean. A creole is simply a natural language that developed from the mixing of speakers of multiple languages, with the grammar and vocabulary merging to form a new language. A creole differentiates itself from a pidgin language by having native speakers, blossoming into a fully fledged language of its own. Though there are many creoles around the world, Cape Verdean Creole is credited as being the oldest living creole.
Cape Verdean Creole is the first language of virtually all Cape Verdeans and the second language of many in the Cape Verdean diaspora, totaling around 870,000 native speakers. While Cape Verde or Cabo Verde), a little-known island nation off the west coast of Africa, designates Cape Verdean Creole as its national language, the official language is nonetheless Portuguese, which is used in schools, the government, and media. This leaves Cape Verdean Creole as a non-standardized language, and though measures to standardize it are underway, challenges abound.
Non-standardized languages like Cape Verdean Creole rarely enjoy professional translation services—but that’s what we here at TranslationServices.com are here to change. Contact us today for a free quote for our Cape Verdean Creole translation services!
The identity of the world’s oldest living creole: Cape Verdean Creole
Cape Verdean Creole is a Portuguese-based creole language, originating when Portuguese colonists discovered the uninhabited archipelago in the 1400s and brought slaves from West Africa to work on plantations. Thus, the language is influenced by a myriad of African languages, with Mandinka, Wolof, Biafada, Papel, and Banyum perhaps exerting the great influence. While as much as 90% of the vocabulary is derived from Portuguese, the grammar differs substantially, making the language effectively unintelligible to a Portuguese speaker.
Cape Verdean Creole has largely lost the grammatical gender distinctions of Portuguese, retaining them only in the nouns for living things. Plural marking is often omitted, and if marked, only the first word in a plural noun phrase takes the plural marker. The language lacks reflexive and reciprocal pronouns, using the words cabéça ("head") and cumpanhêru ("companion"), respectively, to fulfill these grammatical functions. An interesting feature of Cape Verdean Creole is its “designatives”—a special grammatical category used to present or announce something or someone, divided into two forms depending on the proximity of the object of introduction.
What would you like translated to or from Cape Verdean Creole?
Cape Verdean Creole is a unique language that attests to the diverse history of the Cape Verdean archipelago, and while it may feature many complicated grammatical concepts, our native-speaking Cabe Verdean Creole translators are eager to translate between their language and English. Our services are available both for translations to Cape Verdean Creole and translations from the language, no matter what kind of document you need translated.
If you’re a businessperson looking to better engage your Cape Verdean clientele, translating your marketing material into their native tongue can be a great move and help you forge deeper connections. If you’re an educator, perhaps you’d like to encourage Cape Verdean children to learn in their native language—rather than Portuguese—with the help of professionally translated pedagogical materials. If you’re a content creator or language activist, consider translating your Cape Verdean literary content into English to reach a larger audience and share the culture of the archipelago with the world, or translate English-language books, poetry, apps, and games into Cape Verdean Creole to help cement a bright future for this unique language. We at TranslationServices.com can handle all these translation jobs and more.
So, what do you want translated to or from Cape Verdean Creole? Reach out today to discuss your needs!