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Lingala language - Definition and Overview |
| Related Words: Afghan, Afghani, Afrikaans, Ainu, Akan, Akkadian, Albanian, Aleut, Algonquian, Algonquin, Amharic, Anatolian, Andaman, Apache, Arabic, Aramaic, Araucanian, Arawak, Arawakan, Armenian, Aryan, Assamese |
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Lingala is one of the Bantu languages spoken throughout the northwestern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo-Kinshasa) and a large part of the Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville), as well as to some degree in Angola and the Central African Republic. It has over 10 million speakers. It is classed C40 under the Guthrie system for classifying Bantu languages. Geographic distribution of Lingala speakers In the 19th century, the lingua franca used along the Congo river was called Lobangi. That language was learned and influenced by the African helpers the Westeners brought in from other places (Zanzibar, Comoros and the Tanganyikan inland). Later on, the Westerners began to learn the language themselves. After 1880 the language became known as Bangala and around 1900 it was replaced by term Lingala. The term first appears in a written form in a publication by the missionary Egide De Boeck (1903).
Lingala's vocabulary has borrowed much French. There is also some Portuguese influence, such as in the words for butter (manteka), table (mesa), shoes (sapatu), and even some English influences: for instance, the word for milk (miliki), or book (buku). Congolese rebels now use the cryptic forms of the language to pass messages undecipherable by Western intelligence agencies.
External link
Wikipedia articles written in this language are located at the
Lingala language Wikipedia
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