The Politics of Cape Verdean Creole

Luís Batalha

(Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Políticas, Lisboa)

Despite modern linguists pointing further and further in the direction that Creoles are full-fledged language systems and not a sort of ‘dialects’ emerged from the incapacity of the colonial subjects to speak the metropolitan language, most Cape Verdeans, particularly those who are fluent in Portuguese, tend to think of Cape Verdean (CV) Creole as a second-order language appropriate for using in informal contexts (family and friendship) but not in more serious contexts (e.g. school and administration).

The divide between Portuguese as a language and CV Creole as a dialect or ‘broken Portuguese’ emerged during colonialism as part of a strategy aimed at incorporating the Cape Verdeans as assimilados (assimilated) and at making them a middleman minority throughout the Portuguese empire. The CV Creole was seen by metropolitans as a language of pretos (blacks) and by the educated Cape Verdeans as badly spoken Portuguese. Today one can still find this old idea among the remainder of the old colonial Cape Verdean elite. However, more surprising is to see that the new political elite emerged from the independence continue to use the old colonial dichotomy between Portuguese and CV Creole to its own benefit. Despite the manifest intention of making CV Creole the-official language, Portuguese continue to be the official language despite being used only by the educated tier in Cape Verde in their bridging with Portugal and the now called ‘lusophone’ world. Portuguese works as sort of Cape Verdean mandarin, separating the educated from the masses.

Those who defend that Portuguese should carry on as the official language frequently use the argument of the regional variety of CV Creole, which is basically traced by the divide between sampadjudo and badiu Creoles. In this paper I will try to show how the old colonial ideas about language and identity still play an important role in keeping the hierarchical divide between Portuguese and CV Creole and in hindering the implementation of this latter as the de facto official language of Cape Verde and the Cape Verdeans. I will explore how the old colonial divide has helped to maintain in postcolonial time the social and cultural distance between the educated elite and the masses.

Keywords: Cape Verdean Creole, Portuguese, sampadjudo, badiu, colonialism, postcolonialism, elite, masses.