Portuguese-based creole languages used to distinguish locally born black people of African descent from those who had been brought from Africa as slaves. In time, however, this generic sense was lost, and the word "crioulo" or its derivatives (like "Creole" and its equivalents in other languages) became the name of several specific Upper Guinean communities and their languages: the Guinean people and their Kriol language, Cape Verdean people and their Kriolu language, all of which still today have very vigorous use, suppressing the importance of official standard Portuguese. The oldest Portuguese-based creole are the so-called "crioulos" of Upper Guinea, born around the Portuguese
Comparison of Portuguese and Spanish criteria has been carried out, it has been suggested that words of French origin in Portuguese are significantly more numerous than those in Spanish. Here are some examples: Spanish kept much of the Mozarabic vocabulary of Arabic origin, while the Mozarabic component was less extensive in Portuguese. Thus we find a number of cases in which the usual Spanish word is derived from Arabic, while the corresponding word in Portuguese is Latin, Greek, Germanic or Celtic-derived, as in the following examples: There are some examples where a word of Arabic origin is used in Portuguese but not in Spanish, such