Bangala or Mɔnɔkɔ na bangála is a

Bantu language The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu people of Central, Southern, Eastern africa and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages. T ...

spoken in the northeast corner of the

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

, it is also spoken in parts of

South Sudan South Sudan (; din, Paguot Thudän), officially the Republic of South Sudan ( din, Paankɔc Cuëny Thudän), is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered by Ethiopia, Sudan, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the ...

and some speakers are still found in the extreme western part of

Uganda }), is a landlocked country in East Africa. The country is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The south ...

(e.g.,

Arua Arua is a city and commercial centre within the Arua District in the Northern Region of Uganda. Location Arua is approximately , by road, north-west of Kampala, the capital and largest city of Uganda, Arua is about , by road, west of Gulu, ...

Koboko Koboko is a town in Northern Region of Uganda. It is the main municipal, administrative, and commercial centre of Koboko District. Koboko is also the hometown of former dictator Idi Amin who ruled Uganda between 1971 and 1979. History A farm in ...

). A sister language of

Lingala Lingala (Ngala) (Lingala: ''Lingála'') is a Bantu language spoken in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the northern half of the Republic of the Congo, in their capitals, Kinshasa and Brazzaville, and to a lesser degree ...

, it is used as a lingua franca by people with different languages and rarely as a first language. There are about 3.5 million speakers It is spoken to the east and northeast of the area where Lingala is spoken. In Lingala, Bangala translates to "People of

Mongala Mongala is one of the 21 new provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo created in the 2015 repartitioning. Mongala, Équateur, Nord-Ubangi, Sud-Ubangi, and Tshuapa provinces are the result of the dismemberment of the former Équateur ...

". This means people living along the

Mongala River The Mongala River in the northern Democratic Republic of the Congo is a right tributary of the Congo River. Course The Mongala River is long, or long if the Ebola tributary is included. It is formed by the confluence of the Dwa River and the ...

. Across Bas-Uele Province, Bangala speakers have to a great extent adopted Lingala.

History

As Lingala spread east and north, its vocabulary was replaced more and more by local languages, and it became more of an

interlanguage An interlanguage is an idiolect that has been developed by a learner of a second language (L2) which preserves some features of their first language (L1), and can also overgeneralize some L2 writing and speaking rules. These two characteristics ...

(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. 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.

Characteristics

In Bangala, the words for six and seven (''motoba, sambo'') are replaced with the

Swahili Swahili may refer to: * Swahili language, a Bantu language official in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and widely spoken in the African Great Lakes * Swahili people, an ethnic group in East Africa * Swahili culture Swahili culture is the culture of ...

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 ''kusara'', not ''kosala''. Many other Bangala words have an /u/ sound where Lingala has an /o/ sound, such as ''ɓisu'' (not ''biso'' - "we") and ''mutu'' (not ''moto'' - "person").

Documentation

Several old missionary sketches exist, most of them from the late 19th and early 20th century, e.g., Wtterwulghe (1899), MacKenzie (1910), Heart of Africa Mission (1916), van Mol (1927). However, Bangala as described in these concise overview sketches has changed over the past one hundred years, due to language contact with Ubangian languages and Nilo-Saharan languages of northeastern DR Congo. Currently, researchers from Ghent University, JGU Mainz and Goethe-Universität Frankfurt are working on a grammatical description of the language.

References

External links

Bangala Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words
(from Wiktionary'
Swadesh-list appendix
* List of common words in Bangala * List of common words in Lingala Languages of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Bangi-Ntomba languages Lingala language Languages written in Latin script {{Bantu-lang-stub