Portuguese-based creole languages meaning "in" and/or "on", which would come from the Portuguese contraction "na" meaning "in the" (feminine singular). The Portuguese word for "creole" is "crioulo", which derives from the verb "criar" ("to raise", "to bring up") and a suffix "-oulo" of debated origin. Originally the word was used to distinguish the members of any ethnic group who were born and raised in the colonies from those who were born in their homeland. In Africa it was often applied to locally born people of (wholly or partly) Portuguese descent, as opposed to those born in Portugal; whereas in Brazil it was also
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 In modern Spanish, it has been replaced by ⟨z⟩.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