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Widely distributed throughout the world, creolized languages are native to between 10 and 15 million people.
Most creole languages have vocabularies derived from major European languages.
French-based Creole, with 7 million speakers, is found in Haiti, Mauritius, the French Overseas Departments of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Reunion, and Guyana, in Dominica and St. Lucia, and, although disappearing, in various British-influenced Caribbean islands and in southwestern Louisiana.
The Gullah language is a creolized English still spoken in the east-central coastal states of the United States. Other English-based creoles, comprising 5 million speakers, include Jamaican Creole, Sranantongo (Surinam), Krio (Sierra Leone), Tok Pisin or Melanesian Pidgin English (Papua New Guinea), and various creolized varieties of English spoken throughout the British-influenced Caribbean, in Hawaii, and in coastal areas of West Africa.
Portuguese-based creoles include Papiamento, which also has some Spanish derivation, as well as varieties in use in the Cape Verde Islands and the Gulf of Guinea.
In the United States, black English may have its origin in such a resorption of an English-based creole by the base language.
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