Speak Kriolu

Discover how to have effective conversations in Kriolu.

Mili Mila’s Speak Kriolu app can be used to learn how to speak, read and write in Kriolu.

Learn vocabulary and syntax through an enjoyable and visual experience. Listen to audio of dialog and vocabulary to help you pronounce words. Practice and test your skills using interactive exercises, helping you practice spelling, sentence order and definition of words. Build on your knowledge of Kriolu with lessons ranging from basic greetings, numbers and colors to more complex statements on family, well being, and culture, adding on to your knowledge of Kriolu. Use the Speak Kriolu App to help advance your understanding of Kriolu.

Capeverdean Creole (Kriolu) is the oldest Creole language in the world. With a mixture of Portuguese and African languages, Kriolu was created for survival by the enslaved people brought to the uninhabited islands of Cabo Verde from different areas along the west coast of Africa by the Portuguese, and has a history of being forbidden by the colonizers. Although for most of its existence, Kriolu was solely oral, inventive writing began hundreds of years after it was spoken. Since Kriolu has a phonemic characteristic, influences from other languages like Portuguese were used to write Kriolu. It wasn’t until 2009 that the system of writing Kriolu, known as ALUPEC [Alfabeto Unificado para a Escrita do Caboverdiano (Unified Alphabet for Capeverdean Writing)] was decreed into law by the Capeverdean government, making written Kriolu easier to access and more standardized. Using the Capeverdean Alphabet we have been able to create resources to allow access to the Kriolu language.