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 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