Bangala language

Bangala is a Bantu language spoken in the northeast corner of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan and the extreme western part of Uganda. A divergent form of Lingala, it is used as a lingua franca by people with different languages and rarely as a first language. The estimated number of speakers varies between 2 and 3.5 million.^[3] It is spoken to the east and northeast of the area where Lingala is spoken. In Lingala, Bangala translates to "People of Mongala" this means people living along the Mongala River

History[]

As Lingala spread east and north, its vocabulary was replaced more and more by local languages, and it became more of an interlanguage (a language that is a mix of two or more languages) and was classified as a separate language – Bangala. The vocabulary varies, depending on the first language of the speakers.

Around the 1980s, with the popularity and increased availability of Lingala in modern music, young people in large villages and towns began adopting Lingala so much that their Bangala is becoming more of a dialect than a separate language.^[4]

Characteristics[]

In Bangala, the words for six and seven (motoba, sambo) are replaced with the Swahili words sita and saba. Many Lingala words are replaced by words in Swahili, Zande, other local languages, plus English (bilizi is derived from the English word bridge) and, of course, French.

The verb "to be" is conjugated differently in Bangala. Below is a comparison with Lingala.

The verb prefix ko-, meaning "to" in Lingala is instead ku, as it is in Swahili, so "to be" in Bangala is kusala, not kosala. Many other Bangala words have an /u/ sound where Lingala has an /o/ sound, such as bisu (not biso - "we") and mutu (not moto - "person").

References[]

External links[]

• Bangala Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
• List of common words in Bangala
• List of common words in Lingala

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