Lanc-Patuá is a creole language

Creole language

A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...

 spoken in the state of Amapá

Amapá

Amapá is one of the states of Brazil, located in the extreme north, bordering French Guiana and Suriname to the north. To the east is the Atlantic Ocean, and to the south and west is the Brazilian state of Pará. Perhaps one of the main features of the state is the River Oiapoque, as it was once...

 in Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

, primarily now around the capital, Macapá

Macapá

Macapá is a Brazilian city, capital of Amapá state. Located in the North Region, it is the only state capital that has no highway connections with other capitals...

. It is a French-based creole language, spoken by local Indians and immigrants from French Guiana

French Guiana

French Guiana is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department located on the northern Atlantic coast of South America. It has borders with two nations, Brazil to the east and south, and Suriname to the west...

, the Caribbean

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

 and other areas of Brazil, and their descendants. It has some English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 and Portuguese

Brazilian Portuguese

Brazilian Portuguese is a group of Portuguese dialects written and spoken by most of the 190 million inhabitants of Brazil and by a few million Brazilian emigrants, mainly in the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Canada, Japan and Paraguay....

 influence on its vocabulary, but its grammar is clearly similar to the French-based creole languages

French-based creole languages

A French Creole, or French-based Creole language, is a creole language based on the French language, more specifically on a 17th century koiné French extant in Paris, the French Atlantic harbors, and the nascent French colonies...

 of the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean

Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...

.

There are 40,000–50,000 speakers.

The name comes from the French Langue Patois, meaning simply dialectal language.

Lanc-Patuá is derived from Karipúna Creole spoken by indigenous Amerindians. The substratum

Substratum

In linguistics, a stratum or strate is a language that influences, or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum is a language which has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum is the language that has higher power or prestige. Both substratum and superstratum...

 language of Karipúna Creole is Karipúna, a now extinct mixed language

Mixed language

A mixed language is a language that arises through the fusion of two source languages, normally in situations of thorough bilingualism, so that it is not possible to classify the resulting language as belonging to either of the language families that were its source...

 with Galibi vocabulary and Palikur

Palikur

The Palikur are an Arawak-speaking clan society located in the riverine areas of the Brazilian state of Amapá and the eastern border area of French Guiana, on the left bank of the Oyapock...

 syntax, genetically close to Island Carib and typologically

Linguistic typology

Linguistic typology is a subfield of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features. Its aim is to describe and explain the common properties and the structural diversity of the world's languages...

 close to Media Lengua

Media Lengua

Media Lengua is a language spoken in Salcedo, about 100 km south of Quito, Ecuador, by about 1,000 people of Native American ancestry. It is usually classified as a mixed language as it combines Spanish vocabulary with a Quechua grammatical system, most conspicuously morphology...

.