The basics

Good news: Lingala is written the way it is spoken. Each letter always keeps the same sound. Learn these sounds once and you can read everything else.

The 7 vowels

Two letters are new: ɛ sounds like an open e, ɔ like an open o. Listen, then repeat out loud.

The consonant pairs

mb, nd, ng… are said in one breath: the m or n is light, almost glued to the consonant that follows.

The tones

Lingala is a tonal language: on each syllable the voice rises or stays low, and that melody can change the meaning of a word. The acute accent (ó) marks a high tone; no accent means a low tone. Look: same letters, two melodies, two meanings.

In everyday writing (and in our dictionary), tones are almost never written: context does the work. Our recorded voice doesn’t sing them either: your ear catches them by listening to Congolese speakers, songs and radio. And don’t worry: people will understand you even without them.

A Lingala word is often a small prefix attached to a root. In the plural, only the prefix changes. Spot these families and you will guess dozens of words.

Words that came from elsewhere (buku, radio…) simply take ba- in the plural: babuku, baradio.

In Lingala, the person doing the action attaches to the front of the verb. No separate word for I or you: one syllable is enough.

One syllable per person

The verb kolinga (to love): remove ko-, keep the root -linga, and add the person in front.

The pronoun word: me, you, him…

The prefix is usually enough: nalingi already means I love. The full word, ngai, is mostly for emphasis: ngai nalingi, me, I love.

Saying when it happens

With the verb koloba (to speak):

Three handy little bricks

The previous tab shows who does the action and when. This one shows how the verb itself is built. Three things to grasp, and the rest follows on its own.

A verb is ko- plus a stem

Of the 397 verbs in the dictionary, 396 begin with ko-. The one exception is esengeli, “one must”, which has no subject. And as soon as you conjugate, the ko- drops: the stem is what remains, with the person’s syllable in front.

There is no verb “to have”

Where English has two central verbs (to be, to have), Lingala has only one. To have is said “to be with”. Once you know that, an unease lifts: you stop hunting for the missing verb, it never existed.

And out loud, nobody says nazali. In Kinshasa, nazali shortens to naza: nazali na mbongo becomes naza na mbongo. Same verb, said faster. Learn the long form, recognise the short one: it is the one you will hear.

One verb makes others

This is Lingala’s real shortcut. Learning one verb often means getting two or three. These syllables even stack: kosala to work, kosalisa to help, kosalisana to help each other.

And it does not stop at the verb

The same stem becomes a noun. Three dictionary words, one root: when you meet an unknown word, look for the verb sleeping inside it.

Describing is simple: the adjective goes after the noun, and most never change. Here are the few rules you need.

The adjective goes after the noun

The adjectives that change

Only a few adjectives change this way: monene (big), molai (long), mokuse (short), moke (small), motane (red). All the others (kitɔkɔ, malamu, makasi, sika) never change.

In formal writing, the adjective agrees with each class: bato banene, biloko binene. In everyday Kinshasa speech, the mi- form works everywhere.

Describing with na

Many qualities are said with “na + noun”: na esengo means “with joy”, so happy. You also meet ya: moto ya bolingo, a person of love.

What about adverbs?

Nice surprise: often the same word is both adjective and adverb. And mingi means “very” or “a lot”, placed after the word.

Once the basic sentence is in hand, two very useful tools: asking a question, and saying whose something is.

Asking a question

The question word often goes where the answer would go, usually at the end of the sentence.

Whose is it? my, your, his

In Kinshasa, na is the everyday word: mama na ngai, my mother. In writing you also meet ya: ndako ya ngai. Both are said.