Sal Creole Explained

Sal Creole is the name given to the variant of Cape Verdean Creole spoken mainly in the island of Sal of Cape Verde. It belongs to the Barlavento Creoles branch. The speakers of this form of Cape Verdean Creole are 15,000.

Characteristics

Besides the main characteristics of Barlavento Creoles the Sal Creole has also the following ones:

• The progressive aspect of the present is formed by putting tâ tâ before the verbs: tâ + tâ + V.
• In the verbs that end by ~a, that sound pronounced as //ɐ// is represented by pronounced as //ɔ// when the verb is conjugated with the first person of the singular pronoun. Ex.: panhó-m’ pronounced as //pɐˈɲɔm// instead of panhâ-m’ pronounced as //pɐˈɲɐm// “to catch me”, levó-m’ pronounced as //leˈvɔm// instead of levâ-m’ pronounced as //leˈvɐm// “to take me”, coçó-m’ /koˈsɔm/ instead of coçâ-m’ pronounced as //koˈsɐm// “to scratch me”.
• The sound pronounced as //dʒ// (that originates from old Portuguese, written j in the beginning of words) is partially represented by pronounced as //ʒ//. Ex. jantâ pronounced as //ʒɐ̃ˈtɐ// instead of djantâ pronounced as //dʒɐ̃ˈtɐ// “to dine”, jôg’ pronounced as //ʒoɡ// instead of djôgu pronounced as //ˈdʒoɡu// “game”, but in words like djâ pronounced as //dʒɐ// “already”, Djõ pronounced as //dʒõ// “John” the sound pronounced as //dʒ// remains.