The history

• ~3,000 years ago

  Bantu: “the people”

  Farming families leave the region of present-day Cameroon and, generation after generation, settle half of Africa. Their ways of speaking become hundreds of related languages, called Bantu: Lingala, Swahili, Kikongo and Tshiluba are among them. Bantu is ba-ntu, “the people”: the ba- plural you saw in the Basics.

• 14th century

  The Kongo kingdom

  At the mouth of the river, a powerful kingdom grows. Its language, Kikongo, is the language of the court, of trade and of justice, long before Europeans arrive.

• 1624

  Kikongo enters the books

  A catechism is printed in Kikongo: one of the very first books in a Bantu language. These languages have been written for four centuries.

• 19th century

  Bobangi, the river language

  On the Congo River, Bobangi traders connect the peoples along the banks. Their language becomes the language of trade: it is the direct ancestor of Lingala.

The oldest dates are orders of magnitude: historians are still refining them. The rest is documented.

• 1880s

  The colonial stations

  Colonisation sets up stations along the river. Around them, soldiers, boatmen and workers from everywhere need to understand each other fast: Bobangi gets simpler and mixes. This speech is called “Bangala”.

• Around 1901

  Bangala becomes Lingala

  In Nouvelle-Anvers, missionaries put the language into writing, regularise its grammar for school use and give it the name it still bears: Lingala.

• 1900-1950

  The language of the capital

  Léopoldville, the future Kinshasa, grows at full speed. The colonial army and the city make Lingala the language of the street, the one that connects people from all over the country.

• 1940s-50s

  Rumba sings in Lingala

  In the bars of Léopoldville and Brazzaville, Congolese rumba is born, and it sings in Lingala. Music will do more for the language than any decree.

• 1960

  Independence

  Congo becomes independent. Each language keeps its heartland: Lingala in Kinshasa and along the river, Swahili in the East, Tshiluba in Kasai, Kikongo in the West.

• 2006

  Four national languages

  The DRC constitution recognises four national languages: Lingala, Swahili, Kikongo and Tshiluba. French remains the official language.

• 2021

  Rumba as world heritage

  Congolese rumba joins UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage. And wherever it plays, Lingala travels with it.

• Today

  The story goes on

  Tens of millions of people speak Lingala, on both banks of the river and across the diaspora. Every person who learns it writes the next line.

Where the languages live today

How many words are there in a language?

We picture a language as having a fixed number of words. In truth, no one can count them: a living language keeps creating, borrowing and forgetting words. Even for French, dictionaries never agree. What we can count is what we gather here.

~500 related Bantu languages across Africa. Lingala, Swahili, Kikongo and Tshiluba are among them, sharing words and grammar from the same family.

• 1,582Lingala
• 1,441Swahili
• 162Kikongo
• 22Tshiluba

These numbers are our dictionary’s, not those of the whole languages: they grow with every update. Lingala and Swahili are already well stocked; Kikongo and Tshiluba are only just getting started.