language fact file: Democratic Republic of Congo

A language native to: the Democratic Republic of Congo

Number of native speakers: 20 million

Learn some: Greet people in Lingala with ‘mbote’, which means hello. You can ask ‘ozali malamu?’, which means ‘are you well?’ Hopefully the answer will be ‘nazali malamu’ – I am fine.

Fast facts:

Lingala started life as a simplified language of trade, allowing people living and travelling along the Congo river to do business. Prior to the arrival of Europeans, traders had used a language called Bobangi, but Europeans struggled to learn this, so the simpler Lingala grew in its place. From there it became a complex language spoken as a mother tongue by 20 million people.

Its roots as a language of trade are reflected in relatively large numbers of loan words from other languages, such as motuka from English, meaning car, sabuni from French, meaning soap (savon) and manteka from Portuguese, meaning butter or fat (manteiga).

Lingala is a tonal language, which means meaning is influenced by the tone used. For example, kóma means to arrive, whereas kòma means to write. As it is written using the Latin alphabet and Lingala writers do not often use markers to show the tone, readers often have to rely on context to understand meaning.