Language/Upper-guinea-crioulo/Pronunciation/Alphabet-and-Pronunciation
Guinea-Bissau Creole is an analytical type-SVO language. It shows analytical causative verbal extension (in –VntV), which, among the other Afro-Portuguese Creoles of West Africa, is only observed in Casamance Creole.
Guinea-Bissau Creole (Bissau dialect) involves a process of vocalic closure on Portuguese items, which draws a distinction from Casamance Creole and Cape Verdean: Bissau Creole « algiŋ », someone vs. Casamance Creole « algeŋ » and Cape Verdean « algem ».
Alphabet[edit | edit source]
Vowels[edit | edit source]
| front | central | back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| close | i | u | |
| mid | e | o | |
| open | a |
All of the oral vowels have corresponding nasal vowels.
Guinea-Bissau Kriyol has 24 consonants, although in some ethnic lects some of these are in free variation, such as the voiceless velar stop and its voiced counterpart in the Kriyol of Balanta speakers, or the voiceless bilabial stop and the voiceless labio-dental fricative in the Kriyol of Bijagó speakers.
Consonants[edit | edit source]
(orthographic equivalents in angle brackets)
| bilabial | labio-dental | alveolar | post-alveolar | palatal | velar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | |||
| voiced | b, mb | d | g | ||||
| nasal | m | n | ɲ <nh> | ŋ <n> | |||
| trill | r | ||||||
| fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʃ <x> | |||
| voiced | v | z | ʒ <j> | ||||
| affricate | voiceless | tʃ <tc> | |||||
| voiced | dʒ <dj> | ||||||
| lateral | l | ʎ <lh> | |||||
| glides | w <u> | j <i> |