São Nicolau Creole

São Nicolau Creole is the variant of Cape Verdean Creole spoken mainly in the São Nicolau Island of Cape Verde. It belongs to the Barlavento Creoles branch. The speakers of this form of Cape Verdean Creole are 15,000 and it is the fifth most spoken form of Creole in the language. Literature is rarely recorded but the form of the Capeverdean Creole has been recorded in music.

Characteristics
Besides the main characteristics of Barlavento Creoles the São Nicolau 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 is represented by  when the verb is conjugated with the first person of the singular pronoun. Ex.: panhó-m’  instead of panhâ-m’  “to catch me”, levó-m’  instead of levâ-m’  “to take me”, coçó-m’  instead of coçâ-m’  “to scratch me”.
 * The sounds and  are pronounced by some speakers as  and  when they are before palatal vowels. Ex.: f’djêra  instead of f’guêra  “fig tree”, patchê  instead of paquê  “because”, Pr’djíça  instead of Pr’guiíça  “Preguiça” (place name), tchím  instead of quêm  “who”.
 * The sound (that originates from old Portuguese, written j in the beginning of words) is partially represented by . Ex. jantâ  instead of djantâ  “to dine”, jôg’  instead of djôgu  “game”, but in words like djâ  “already”, Djõ  “John” the sound  remains.
 * The unstressed final vowel does not disappear when it follows the sounds  or . Ex.: tabácu  instead of tabóc’  “tobacco”, frángu  instead of fróng’  “chicken”.