Lingala


Lingala is a Bantu language spoken throughout the northwestern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and a large part of the Republic of the Congo. It is spoken to a lesser degree in Angola and the Central African Republic. There are over 70 million lingalophones.

History

In the 19th century, before the creation of the Congo Free State, the Bangala were a group of similar Bantu peoples living and trading along the bend of the Congo River that reached from Irebu at the mouth of the Ubangi River to the Mongala River. They spoke similar languages, such as Losengo, but their trade language was Bangi, which was the most prestigious language between Stanley Pool and Irebu. As a result, people upstream of the Bangala mistook Bangi for the language of the Bangala and called it Lingala, and European missionaries followed suit.
In the last two decades of the 19th century, after the forces of Leopold II of Belgium conquered the region and started exploiting it commercially, Bangi came into wider use. The colonial administration, in need of a common language for the region, started to use the language for administrative purposes. It had already simplified, compared to local Bantu languages, in its sentence structure, word structure and sounds, and speakers borrowed words and constructs liberally from other languages. This allowed the language to spread easily amongst the Congolese population. However, the fact that speakers had very similar native languages prevented Lingala from becoming as radically restructured as Kituba, which developed among speakers of both Bantu and West African languages.
Around 1900, CICM missionaries started a project to "purify" the language in order to make it "pure Bantu" again. Meeuwis writes:
issionaries, such as the Protestant W. Stapleton and later, and more influentially, E. De Boeck himself, judged that the grammar and lexicon of this language were too poor for it to function properly as a medium of education, evangelization, and other types of vertical communication with the Africans in the northwestern and central-western parts of the colony... They set out to 'correct' and 'expand' the language by drawing on lexical and grammatical elements from surrounding vernacular languages.

The importance of Lingala as a vernacular has since grown with the size and importance of its main centers of use, Kinshasa and Brazzaville; with its use as the lingua franca of the armed forces; and with the popularity of soukous music.

Name

European missionaries called the language Bangala, after the Bangala people, or Lingala. The latter was intended to mean ' of the Bangala' or 'of the River'. However, this was an error, as the proper Bangi form would have been Kingala. The name Lingala first appears in writing in a publication by the CICM missionary Egide De Boeck.

Characteristics and usage

According to some linguists, Lingala is a Bantu-based creole of Central Africa with roots in the Bobangi language. In its basic vocabulary, Lingala has many borrowings from various other languages, such as French, Spanish, Portuguese, and English.
In practice, the extent of borrowing varies widely with speakers of different regions, and during different occasions.
French
Spanish
Portuguese
English
The Lingala language can be divided into several dialects or variations. The major variations are considered to be Standard Lingala, Spoken Lingala, Kinshasa Lingala and Brazzaville Lingala.
Standard Lingala is mostly used in educational and news broadcasts on radio or television, in religious services in the Roman Catholic Church and is the language taught as a subject at all educational levels. Standard Lingala is historically associated with the work of the Catholic Church and missionaries. It has a seven-vowel system with an obligatory tense-lax vowel harmony. It also has a full range of morphological noun prefixes with mandatory grammatical agreement system with subject–verb, or noun–modifier for each of class. Standard Lingala is largely used in formal functions.
Spoken Lingala is the variation mostly used in the day-to-day lives of Lingalaphones. It has a full morphological noun prefix system, but the agreement system is more lax than the standard variation, i.e. noun-modifier agreement is reduced to two classes. Regarding phonology, there is also a seven-vowel system but the vowel harmony is not mandatory. This variation of Lingala is historically associated with the Protestant missionaries' work. Spoken Lingala is largely used in informal functions, and the majority of Lingala songs use spoken Lingala over other variations. Modern spoken Lingala is increasingly influenced by French; French verbs, for example, may be "lingalized" adding Lingala inflection prefixes and suffixes: "acomprenaki te" or "acomprendraki te" instead of classic Lingala "asímbaki ntína te".

Phonology

Vowels

IPAExample Example MeaningNotes
lilálaorange
kulútuelder
elongiface
mobáliboypronounced slightly higher than the cardinal,
realized as
lɛlɔ́today
mbɔ́ngɔmoney
áwahere

Vowel harmony

Lingala words show vowel harmony to some extent. The close-mid vowels and normally do not mix with the open-mid vowels and in words. For example, the words ndɔbɔ 'fishhook' and ndobo 'mouse trap' are found, but not *ndɔbo or *ndobɔ.

Vowel shift

The Lingala spoken in Kinshasa shows a vowel shift from to, leading to the absence of the phoneme in favor of. The same occurs with and, leading to just. So in Kinshasa, a native speaker will say mbóte as, compared to the more traditional pronunciation of.

Consonants

IPAExample Example Meaning
napɛ́síI give
mpɛmbɛ́ninear
bolingolove
mbɛlíknife
litéyalesson
ntɔ́ngódawn
daidaisticky
ndekosibling, cousin, relative
mokɔlɔday
nkólóowner
galamɛ́lɛgrammar
ngáíme
mamámother
boyinihate
nyamaanimal
fɔtɔ́photograph
velóbicycle
sɔ̂lɔtruly
nyɔ́nsɔall
zɛ́lɔsand
nzámbeGod
cakú or shakúAfrican grey parrot
ɔ́lɔgold
yéhim; her
wápiwhere

is allophonic with depending on the dialect.

Prenasalized consonants

The prenasalized stops formed with a nasal followed by a voiceless plosive are allophonic to the voiceless plosives alone in some variations of Lingala.
The prenasalized voiced occlusives, do not vary.

Tones

Lingala being a tonal language, tone is a distinguishing feature in minimal pairs, e.g.: mutu and mutú, or kokoma and kokóma. There are two tones possible, the normal one is low and the second one is high. There is a third, less common tone – starting high, dipping low and then ending high – all within the same vowel sound, e.g.: bôngó.

Tonal morphology

Tense morphemes carry tones.

Noun class system

Like all Bantu languages, Lingala has a noun class system in which nouns are classified according to the prefixes they bear and according to the prefixes they trigger in sentences. The table below shows the noun classes of Lingala, ordered according to the numbering system that is widely used in descriptions of Bantu languages.
ClassNoun prefixExampleTranslation
1mo-mopésiservant
2ba-bapésiservants
3mo-mokílatail
4mi-mikílatails
5li-lilobaword
6ma-malobawords
7e-elokóthing
8bi-bilokóthings
9m-/n-ntabagoat
10m-/n-ntabagoats
9aØsánzámoon
10aØsánzámoons
11lo-lolemotongue
14bo-bosotodirt
15ko-kosalato work

Individual classes pair up with each other to form singular/plural pairs, sometimes called 'genders'. There are seven genders in total. The singular classes 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 take their plural forms from classes 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, respectively. Additionally, many household items found in class 9 take a class 2 prefix in the plural: lutu → balutu 'spoon', mesa → bamesa 'table', sani → basani 'plate'. Words in class 11 usually take a class 10 plural. Most words from class 14 do not have a plural counterpart.
Class 9 and 10 have a nasal prefix, which assimilates to the following consonant. Thus, the prefix shows up as 'n' on words that start with t or d, e.g. ntaba 'goat', but as 'm' on words that start with b or p. There is also a prefixless class 9a and 10a, exemplified by sánzá → sánzá 'moon or month'. Possible ambiguities are solved by the context.
Noun class prefixes do not show up only on the noun itself, but serve as markers throughout the whole sentence. In the sentences below, the class prefixes are underlined.
Only to a certain extent, noun class allocation is semantically governed. Classes 1/2, as in all Bantu languages, mainly contain words for human beings; similarly, classes 9/10 contain many words for animals. In other classes, semantical regularities are mostly absent or are obscured by many exceptions.

Verb inflections and morphology

Verbal extensions

There are four morphemes modifying verbs. They are added to some verb root in the following order:
  1. Reversive
  2. : e.g.: kozinga to wrap and kozingola to develop
  3. Causative
  4. : e.g. : koyéba to know and koyébisa to inform
  5. Applicative
  6. : e.g. : kobíka to heal, to save and kobíkela to heal, to save
  7. Passive
  8. : e.g. : koboma to kill and kobomama to be killed
  9. Reciprocal or stationary
  10. : e.g. : kokúta to find and kokútana to meet

    Tense inflections

The first tone segment affects the subject part of the verb, the second tone segment attaches to the semantic morpheme attached to the root of the verb.
Lingala is more a spoken language than a written language, and has several different writing systems, most of them ad hoc. Due to the low literacy of Lingala speakers in Lingala, its popular orthography is very flexible and varies from one Congo to the other. Some orthographies are heavily influenced by the French language orthography; including double S, ss, to transcribe ; ou for ; i with trema, aï, to transcribe or ; e with acute accent, é, to transcribe ; e to transcribe, o with acute accent, ó, to transcribe or sometimes in opposition to o transcribing or ; i or y can both transcribe . The allophones are also found as alternating forms in the popular orthography; sango is an alternative to nsango ; nyonso, nyoso, nionso, nioso are all transcriptions of nyɔ́nsɔ.
In 1976, the Société Zaïroise des Linguistes adopted a writing system for Lingala, using the open e and the open o to write the vowels and, and sporadic usage of accents to mark tone, though the limitation of input methods prevents Lingala writers from easily using the and and the accents. For example, it is almost impossible to type Lingala according to that convention with a common English or French keyboard. The convention of 1976 reduced the alternative orthography of characters but did not enforce tone marking. The lack of consistent accentuation is lessened by the disambiguation due to context.
The popular orthographies seem to be a step ahead of any academic-based orthography. Many Lingala books, papers, even the translation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and more recently, Internet forums, newsletters, and major websites, such as Google's Lingala, do not use the Lingala-specific characters ɛ and ɔ. Tone marking is found in most literary works.

Alphabet

The Lingala language has 35 letters and digraphs. The digraphs each have a specific order in the alphabet; for example, mza will be expected to be ordered before mba, because the digraph mb follows the letter m. The letters r and h are rare but present in borrowed words.
The accents indicate the tones as follows:
VariantsExample
aAá â ǎnyama, matáta, sâmbóle, libwǎ
bBbísó
cCciluba
dD
eEé ê ěkomeka, mésa, kobênga
fFlifúta
gGkogánga
gbGbgbagba
hHbohlu
iIí î ǐwápi, zíko, tî, esǐ
kKkokoma
lLkolála
mMkokóma
mbMbkolámba, mbwá, mbɛlí
mpMplímpa
nNlíno
ndNdndeko
ngNgndéngé
nkNknkámá
nsNs
ntNtntaba
nyNynyama
nzNznzala
ooó ô ǒmoto, sóngóló, sékô
pP
rRmalaríya
sSkopésa
tTtatá
uUúbutú, koúma
vVkovánda
wWkáwa
yYkoyéba
zZkozala

Sample

The Lord's Prayer
The Lord's Prayer

Mandombe

The Mandombe script is an abugida, primarily used to write Kikongo, that can also be used for Lingala. The script is used in the church of Kimbangu as a liturgical script.