Creole peoples Creole peoples Creole people are ethnic groups which originated during the colonial-era from racial mixing between Europeans and non-European peoples, known as creolisation. These groups are typically descended from White Western European colonial settlers, West African slaves, Haitians and indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Creole peoples vary widely in ethnic background and mixture, and many have since developed distinct ethnic identities. The development of creole languages is attributed to, but independent of, the emergence of creole ethnic identities. The English word "creole" derives from the French "créole", which in turn came from Portuguese "crioulo", a diminutive of
Comparison of Portuguese and Spanish Portuguese (e.g., “"muié"” for "mulher", 'woman'), but it is much less widespread than in Spanish. The Portuguese letter ⟨ç⟩ (c-cedilha), based on a Visigothic form of the letter ⟨z⟩: "ꝣ". In Portuguese it is used before ⟨a⟩, ⟨o⟩, and ⟨u⟩ (including nasals), and never at the beginning or end of any word. It always represents the "soft "c"" sound, namely . In modern Spanish, it has been replaced by ⟨z⟩. Example: "calzado" (Sp.), "calçado" (Port.) 'footwear'. Various word endings are consistently different in the two languages. Both languages use diacritics to mark the stressed syllable of a word whenever it