Lingala Language
Lingala is a language predominantly spoken in the Congo region of sub-Saharan Africa, originating from the Bobangi language, which served as a lingua franca for trade along the Congo River. During the late 19th century, Lingala was formalized by Catholic missionaries who standardized its grammar and vocabulary, transforming it from the earlier Bangala into a distinct language. While Lingala has a written form using a modified Latin alphabet, there is no universally accepted orthography, and many speakers remain functionally illiterate. The language has significant influences from French and other European languages due to historical colonial interactions.
Lingala is classified under the Bantu languages, part of the larger Niger-Congo language family, which encompasses over 1,500 distinct languages spoken by a majority of Africa's population. It exists in two main forms: standard Lingala, used in writing and formal contexts, and spoken Lingala, which features more regional variations and informal structures. With estimates of 10 to 25 million speakers, Lingala is particularly prominent in the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as in surrounding countries. As interest in the language grows, it is viewed as a potential link language for broader communication across central and eastern Africa.
Lingala Language
The Lingala language is native to sub-Saharan Africa and is most commonly spoken in the Congo region. It is believed to have descended from Bobangi, a tongue that was historically used as a lingua franca for commercial activity along the banks of the Congo River. Bobangi spread into neighboring parts of Africa during the era of Belgian colonial rule, and linguists generally believe that it morphed into a distinct language known as Bangala, or Bangi, in the aftermath of this diaspora. Lingala officially emerged during the latter part of the nineteenth century when Catholic missionaries working in the Congo region formalized the grammar, syntax, and lexicon of Bangala into standardized Lingala.
For much of its history and into the present day, Lingala functioned primarily as a spoken language. While the tongue has a systematized form of written expression, it lacks a uniform orthography. Most literate Lingala speakers use a modified form of the Latin alphabet to write Lingala, though others use ad hoc systems of phonetic representation that show a great deal of regional variation. This phenomenon is mainly because a large majority of Lingala speakers are functionally illiterate. It can also be partially attributed to the fact that the European colonizers who standardized the language did so using conventions that were not ideally suited to the tongue's formal characteristics.
History and Classification of the Lingala Language
Prior to Belgian colonization of the Congo River basin and the surrounding regions of sub-Saharan Africa, the Bobangi language served as a language of wider communication, facilitating trade among the local populations. When Belgian colonial activity in the Congo area peaked during the latter half of the nineteenth century, Bobangi-speaking peoples began to migrate away from their traditional concentration along the riverbank and spread into adjacent regions. Lacking a uniform, widely understood language to facilitate their colonial administration, Belgian officials elected to implement Bobangi for this purpose. The emergent language was a distinct descendant of Bobangi, which became known as Bangala.
As was typical of the languages spoken by indigenous African peoples, Bangala lacked universal conventions and did not have a written form. Catholic missionaries working in the area sought to standardize the language to make biblical education accessible to local populations and introduced grammatical, lexical, and syntactic conventions. In the process, a significant number of French loan words entered the language, along with some influences from other European colonial languages, including Dutch, English, and Portuguese. Missionaries also created a uniform written version of Lingala using a modified Latin alphabet to represent and approximate sounds and words. During this standardization process, the name of the language was changed from Bangala to Lingala, meaning "language of the Bangala people." The term "Lingala" was first formally used in 1903 when it appeared in a publication written by a Catholic missionary.
Linguists are not in complete agreement as to whether Lingala should be classified as its own distinct tongue or as a creole variant of the Bangala language. This is, in large part, because modern Lingala shows significant European influence, particularly with respect to its French-derived vocabulary. While this question has not been definitively resolved, experts are in agreement that Lingala belongs to the Bantu branch of a larger phylum known as the Niger-Congo language family. The Niger-Congo family is the widest-reaching language phylum in Africa and is comprised of more than 1,500 distinct languages. Current estimates suggest that about 85 percent of Africa's population speak a Niger-Congo tongue as either a first or a second language.
In the simplest terms, Lingala can be divided into two distinct forms: standard Lingala, which serves as the literary form of the language, and spoken Lingala, which is a more informal version of the language. The major difference between standard and spoken Lingala is that the spoken form displays a more relaxed system of agreement while displaying fluid regional and dialect variations.
From a structural standpoint, Lingala displays a number of distinctive conventions. In standard Lingala, syllables invariably end with a vowel, and its unique /mw/ sound is its only consonant cluster. Lingala also displays a high tone and a low tone, which are used to distinguish similar words from one another and provide grammatical and syntactic context. Its word order tends to follow the subject-verb-object form, though subjects sometimes appear after the verb, especially in cases where the speaker or writer is aiming to place particular emphasis on the verb in a phrase or sentence.
A total of fifteen different noun classes are used in standard Lingala, though only a few of these noun classes are made up of words that are assigned on the basis of their meaning. Nouns also have divergent singular and plural forms, using prefixes to distinguish these forms from one another. Verbs are expressed in three tenses: past, present, and future, and verb conjugation is comprised of a combination of a root and a subject prefix, which combine to create subject-verb agreement. In standard Lingala, these prefixes change, depending on the noun class to which the verb's subject belongs. In spoken Lingala, agreement conventions are highly informal and relaxed.
Geographic Distribution and Modern Usage
True to its historical roots, Lingala is most widely spoken in the Congo River basin region, including the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire). Significant populations of Lingala speakers also live in the Central African Republic, Angola, Gabon, and Sudan. Estimates suggest that between 10 and 25 million people speak Lingala as a first or second language, with approximately two million people counting Lingala as their mother tongue. Additional data shows that a much wider population base is exposed to Lingala on a regular basis, inspiring some experts to posit that the tongue is poised to become a link language across central, eastern, and southern portions of Africa in the years ahead.
Bibliography
Lewis, M. Paul, Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fenning (eds.). Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 18th Edition. Dallas, TX: SIL International, 2015. Print.
"Lingala." National African Language Resource Center. Web. 23 Sept. 2015. HYPERLINK "http://www.nalrc.indiana.edu/brochures/lingala.pdf" \h http://www.nalrc.indiana.edu/brochures/lingala.pdf
Nurse, Derek and Gerard Philippson. The Bantu Languages. London, United Kingdom: Routledge, 2006. Print.
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