Principense Creole
Principense Creole is a minority Portuguese-based creole language spoken in a community of some four thousand people in São Tomé and Príncipe, specifically on the island of Príncipe. It is also called by its native speakers as lunguyê creole ("creole of the island"). There are two Portuguese-based creoles on the island of São Tomé, Angolar Creole and Forro Creole, according to a 1989 study.[4] Today, younger generations of São Toméans are not likely to speak Principense, which has led to its fast decline and moribund status.[5] It is mostly spoken by the elderly (the Ethnologue entry lists 200 native speakers in total), while most of the island's community speaks noncreolized Portuguese; some also speak another, closely related creole language, Forro Creole.
| Principense Creole | |
|---|---|
| lunguyê | |
| Native to | São Tomé and Príncipe |
| Ethnicity | 1,560 (1999)[1] |
Native speakers | 200 (1999)[2] |
Portuguese-based creole
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | pre |
| Glottolog | prin1242[3] |
| Linguasphere | 51-AAC-acb |
 Location of São Tomé and Príncipe | |
Principense Creole presents many similarities with the Forro Creole on São Tomé and may be regarded as a Forro dialect. Like Forro, it is a creole language based on Portuguese with substrates of Bantu and Kwa.
References
- Principense Creole at Ethnologue (14th ed., 2000).
- Principense Creole at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
- Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Principense". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- Holm, John A. (1989). Pidgins and Creoles: Reference Survey. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. p. 277. ISBN 978-0-521-35940-5.
- Estudo do Léxico do São-Tomense com Dicionário, Carlos Fontes - Universidade de Coimbra.