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This is one of the many ways in which Lingala has been grammatically simplified in relation to other Bantu languages. Compared to Swahili, for example, Lingala has fewer noun classes, less noun-class agreement, fewer verb tenses, no separate negative conjugations for verbs, and so on.
Harms, Robert W. (1981). River of wealth, river of sorrow: The central Zaire basin in the era of the slave and ivory trade, 1500-1891. Yale University Press. Mumbanza, mwa Bawele Jérôme (1971). Les Bangala et la première décennie du poste de Nouvelle-Anvers (1884-1894). Kinshasa: Université Lovanium. Literary Lingala ( lingala littéraire or lingala classique in French) is a standardized form used mostly in education and news broadcasts on state-owned radio or television and in Roman Catholic religious services, It is taught as a subject at some educational levels. It is historically associated with the work of the Catholic Church, the Belgian CICM missionaries in particular. It has a seven-vowel system ( /a/ /e/ /ɛ/ /i/ /o/ /ɔ/ /u/) 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. It is largely used in formal functions and in some forms of writing. Most native speakers of Spoken Lingala and Kinshasa Lingala consider it incomprehensible. [20] verse by verse” to display a verse in Lingala followed by the same verse in French or in English or in Swahili. Bwantsa-Kafungu, J'apprends le lingala tout seul en trois mois'. Centre de recherche pédagogique, Centre Linguistique Théorique et Appliquée, Kinshasa 1982.In terms of phonology, Xhosa also features the Welsh ll sound, a voiced version of that sound, a three-way plain-aspirated-voiced consonant system that’s similar to Wu Chinese, vowel length distinctions, and rising and falling tones. The tones and the long vowels in particular give the language a very pleasant rhythm and cadence, quite different from Swahili or Lingala. I even got a chance to speak Lingala with some people at a language exchange event in Brussels! I did not speak it very well, objectively speaking—I managed to say Nayebi te nakoki koloba nini (“I don’t know what I can say”) and a few other basic things — but the Lingala speakers thought it was great. Khabirov, Valeri. (1998) "Maloba ma nkota Russ-Lingala-Falanse. Русско-лингала-французский словарь". Moscow: Institute of Linguistics-Russian Academy of Sciences (соавторы Мухина Л.М., Топорова И.Н.), 384 p. One good place to get started with Swahili is the Swahili grammar guide at Mwana Simba (it looks like the domain has expired, so I’m linking to an archived version). It’s very thorough and covers basically all there is to know about the grammatical structure of Swahili, and includes vocabulary lists and exercises. Lingala's importance 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.
A fresco by Congolese painter Chéri Samba in Matongé, Brussels. The blue text in the middle is in “Lingala” (actually mixed French/Lingala) — “eza” means “is” (short for “ezali”) Try the singular form if the plural was not found (not all words in the database have their plural defined yet) And now I really want to start doing Bantu languages again…. Oops. Maybe I’ll have to make some time for it in a few months. Other Bantu Languages The prenasalized stops formed with a nasal followed by a voiceless plosive are allophonic to the voiceless plosives alone in some variations of Lingala. I did not get very far in Kirundi — I got to around Lesson 8 of the FSI book before dropping it. On the one hand, I felt that I should be spending more time focusing on Swahili, and on the other hand my curiosity was already wandering towards the languages of West Africa. Nevertheless, what I did learn about Kirundi definitely helped me get a better understanding of the Bantu languages as a whole and their relationship to each other.
The word database contains accents, mainly for pronunciation, but the detection code ignores them, so don't rely on them Meeuwis, Michael (2020). A grammatical overview of Lingala: Revised and extended edition. München: Lincom. pp.24–25. ISBN 9783969390047. 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 (e.g. mbísi 'fish'). There is also a prefixless class 9a and 10a, exemplified by sánzá → sánzá 'moon(s) or month(s)'. Possible ambiguities are resolved by context. Sorry if you don’t speak Russian. Another good English-language book for intermediate-level learners is Masomo ya Kisasa: Contemporary Readings in Swahili.) Chinyanja, spoken in Zambia and Malawi, also known as Chi chewa. The Chewa are an ethnic group that speak this language, but people from other groups speak it as well, so sometimes Chinyanja (“lake language” — referring to Lake Malawi) is the preferred term because it’s ethnically neutral. (The “chi-” is the same as “ki-” in Kiswahili and the “isi-” in isiXhosa.)
Swahili is continuing to gain in importance in East Africa thanks to the economic power of Kenya and Tanzania. Earlier this year, Rwanda made Swahili its fourth official language, after Kinyarwanda, French and English. Swahili is also widely spoken in the eastern half of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and seems to be expanding there as well, where it’s pushing up against the next language here: Lingala This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. Qu'attendez-vous ? Rejoignez la communauté de LINGALA Ya Muana Congo et prenez en main votre propre apprentissage dès aujourd'hui🚀. Noun class prefixes show up not only on the noun itself, but as markers throughout a sentence. In the sentences below, the class prefixes are underlined. (There is a special verbal form 'a' of the prefix for class 1 nouns.)
Phrases in Bantu languages
Do you want to go from no previous Lingala knowledge - overwhelmed and confused about where to even start - to speaking Lingala on an advanced level, able to seamlessly form complex sentences with great confidence? Most speakers of Swahili speak it as a second language (it has 19 million native speakers vs. 91 million non-native speakers, per Ethnologue), and it’s been widely used as a trade language in East Africa for centuries. Sāḥil is “coast” in Arabic, and sawāḥil is the plural of that (Arabic plurals are funny), so S awāḥiliyya, i.e. Swahili, is “the language of the coasts” of East Africa, which has been tied to Arabia and India via the monsoon trade (and later the British Empire) for millenia. Zanzibar, whose inhabitants are mostly native speakers of Swahili, was (at least technically) ruled by the Sultan of Oman until 1964. two panes" to display the Lingala at the top and the French or the English or the Swahili version at the bottom
At the same time, Swahili is still very much a Bantu language in terms of grammar, so I wasn’t missing out on anything in that department. It has an elaborate noun-class system that requires adjective and verb agreement. Things like subject pronoun, object pronoun, tense, negation and relative clause markers are all represented by various prefixes and infixes in front of the verb root, while concepts like passive voice, causation, and “doing something for someone” are all expressed by different derivational suffixes after the verb, resulting in lots of long words. Meeuwis, Michael (2020). A Grammatical Overview of Lingala. München: Lincom. p.27. ISBN 9783969390047. Another textbook I used early on was Swahili: A Foundation for Speaking, Reading, and Writing. And after that, I somehow managed to get my hands on a series of Russian-language Swahili textbooks that I found to be better (more systematic and more logically presented) than any of the English material out there: A conjugation of the verb in Lingala that means “to be” will give you a taste for how Lingala grammar works. As you will notice on the following verbs, the subject pronoun is directly attached to the verb. Also, you will note that there is a different prefix for the third person depending on whether the subject being reference is human (one prefix) or else an animal or an object (a different prefix).As a polyglot, he understands the difficulties faced by language students and is able to provide them with a structured and easy-to-follow curriculum that covers the most essential grammar and vocabulary needed to start speaking any language in a relatively short period of time. I think these similarities have something to do with the history of Bantu expansion — specifically, the predecessors of modern Zulu and Xhosa speakers migrated from the Great Lakes region to South Africa at a relatively recent date. Lingala developed as a language used mostly for trade. It is similar to the Lusengo, Bangala, and Bobangi languages. There are probably more than seven million people who speak Lingala as a second language and over two million who speak it as their first language. Lingala is part of the Bantu language family. Lingala Words and Phrases - Greeting and Leave-taking
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