Lingala Language Guide

Also spoken in
Congo - Kinshasa, Congo - Brazzaville
Script
Latin

Where it's spoken

The Democratic Republic of the Congo's constitution names French as the official language and lists Kikongo, Lingala, Swahili and Tshiluba as the national languages. The constitution of the Republic of the Congo likewise names French as the official language, and names Lingala and Kituba as the national vehicular languages.

One academic account describes Lingala as spoken as a first and an additional language mainly in these two countries, and in parts of several neighboring countries. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo it describes Lingala as the dominant lingua franca for daily communication in Kinshasa and in Equateur Province, while in some other provinces it competes with Kikongo or Kiswahili; in the Republic of the Congo it describes Lingala as one of the two major lingua francas in Brazzaville, Pointe-Noire and Impfondo. The same account distinguishes several varieties, including a literary Lingala, a spoken Lingala, a Kinshasa Lingala and a Brazzaville Lingala.

Sources

Script & pronunciation

Lingala is written in Latin letters. A linguistic description of the language gives it seven vowel phonemes, in which the lax mid vowels are written ɛ and ɔ; it gives the pair mabelé "dirt, soil" and mabɛlɛ "milk, breast" as an example of the contrast between the tense and lax front vowels.

This app writes only the plain letters e and o, with no ɛ, ɔ or tone marks. Where a card shows the open vowels, it says so in its pronunciation note: the card for Mbote ("Hello") notes that the word is pronounced mbɔ́tɛ, with open ɔ and ɛ, and that the app writes it with plain o and e.

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Grammar essentials

Lingala nouns carry a prefix that pairs a singular with a plural: the description lists mo- for a person and ba- for persons (mo-to, ba-to), li- with ma-, and e- with bi-, among other classes. This app's card for Bato mibale ("Two people") shows the plural prefix ba- in bato; its note adds that the numerals two to five take mi- and follow the noun.

The same account describes Kinshasa Lingala as one in which the plural prefix ba- has spread to other classes, giving forms such as ba-ndáko "houses", and as one with a much reduced agreement system, in which agreement on the verb has only three classes (human singular, human plural, and everything else) and agreement on adjectives, demonstratives and the like is lost. In the literary variety, the account judges sentences that lack this noun-class agreement on the verb and the adjective to be ungrammatical.

The basic word order is subject, verb, object. A sentence is negated by a word, te, that follows the verb. This app's card for Nayebi te ("I do not know") puts the negative te last, and its card for Kobanga te ("Do not be afraid") explains that the negative imperative is the ko- infinitive plus te.

A question does not need a question particle: this app's card for Mbote, ozali malamu? ("Hello, how are you?") notes that there is no question particle and that intonation makes the question.

Sources

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