🇨🇻 What Language Do They Speak in Cape Verde?
The short answer
Cape Verde's official language is Portuguese, used in school, government and media — but the language of home, music and the heart is Cape Verdean Creole (Kriolu), a Portuguese-based creole and the oldest still spoken in the world.
Worth knowing
- ●Kriolu is the mother tongue of essentially all Cape Verdeans; Portuguese is learned at school
- ●Cesária Évora sang her world-famous mornas in Kriolu
- ●Each island has its own Kriolu variant — Santiago's and São Vicente's are the big two
Going to Cape Verde? Say your first words before you land.
Yap gives you a real 30-second spoken conversation in Portuguese every day — role-play the café, the taxi and the market with an AI tutor that listens and gently corrects. Four weeks of that beats any phrasebook.