CONGOBONGO Newsletter | Main Languages of the DRC

In this Edition

AMERICAN EMBASSY KINSHASA NEWSLETTER | NOVEMBER 18, 2010

2 Main Languages of the DRC 6 The Action Vision Centre of Masina by Nelson Arias-M 7 AERWA News 8 What’s Going On 12Classifieds 15 Calendar

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he Democratic Republic of the Congo is a multilingual country where an estimated total of 242 languages are spoken. The official language, inherited from the colonial period, is French. Four indigenous languages have the status of national language: Kikongo, Lingala, Swahili and Tshiluba.

When the country was a Belgian colony, it had already instituted teaching and use of the four national languages in primary schools, making it one of the few African nations to have had literacy in local languages during the European colonial period.

During the colonial period, both Dutch and French were the official languages but French was by far the most important. The French spoken across Congo can be difficult to understand as not only do locals speak with heavy accents, but they also throw in their own tribal words on occasion. Therefore, almost every person in Congo will be able to communicate with an expatriate in French. The DRC, however, is making inroads into the English world. With MONUSCO and its bilingual staff here, fixers and concierges of major cities are beginning to learn the language.

Of the non-European languages used, four dominate across of Congo. The capital cities are melting pots to be sure, but Lingala is the language primarily spoken. The dialect differs even in the short distance between Kinshasa and Brazaville, but there is a standardized version that is used in media and education circles. Lingala also dominates in northern Congo-Brazaville and the northwest regions of the DRC. Katanga region is dominated by Swahili, and travelers who have visited other east African countries will find that the language is very much the same. It is also spoken across mucho of the eastern DR Congo, up to southern parts of Ituri province. Tshiluba is spoken in the Kasai provinces, the middle of the DR Congo, as language descended from the ancient Luba Kigdom that existed in the same region over a millennium ago.

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Lingala Is a language which gained its modern form in the colonial period, with the push of missionaries to teach a local language. It was originally spoken in the upper Congo river area but rapidly spread to the middle Congo area and eventually became the major Bantu language in Kinshasa for many reasons. The colonial administration needed a common language for the region and started to use the language for missionary and administrative purposes, calling it Bangala to set it apart from Bobangi.

Compared to local Bantu languages, its sentence structure, word structure and sounds were simplified and its speakers freely borrowed words and constructions from other languages they knew. It became the language of the army, police, administration, education, politics, media, and missionaries. Lingala was made the official language of the army under Mobutu, but since the rebellions the army has also used Swahili in the east. With the transition period and the consolidation of different armed groups into the Congolese Army, the linguistic policy has returned to its previous form and Lingala is again the official language of the Army.

Lingala is one of the principal languages spoken in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), (Congo-Kinshasa), and the Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville). The Lingala of today is based on Bobangi, spoken by the people (bangala) who lived along the Congo River between Lisala and Kinshasa. Bobangi was the regional trade language until the arrival of the Europeans in the late nineteenth century. Lingala language can be divided into four variations: Standard Lingala, Spoken Lingala, Kinshasa Lingala, and Brazzaville Lingala.

Standard Lingala is mostly used in educational and news broadcasts on radio or television, in religious services in the Catholic Church and is the language taught as a subject at all educational levels. Standard Lingala is historically associated with the work of the Catholic Church and its missionaries. It is largely used in formal functions. Spoken Lingala is the variation mostly used in the day-to -day lives of Lingala speakers. This variation of Lingala is historically associated with the work of Protestant missionaries. Spoken Lingala is largely used in informal functions, and the majority of Lingala songs use Spoken Lingala over other variations. Modern Congolese music, called soukous, is one of the most popular in Africa and is a true source of enrichment of the language.

Like all Bantu languages, Lingala has a noun class system in which nouns are classified according to the prefixes they bear and according to the prefixes they trigger in sentences. Individual classes pair up with each other to form singular/plural pairs, sometimes called 'genders'. There are seven genders in total. The singular classes 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 take their plural forms from classes 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, respectively. Additionally, many household items found in class 9 take a class 2 prefix (ba) in the plural: lutu > balutu 'spoon', mesa > bamesa 'table', sani > basani 'plate'. Words in class 11 usually take a class 10 plural. Most words from class 14 (abstract nouns) do not have a plural counterpart.

Class 9 and 10 have a nasal prefix, which assimilates to the following consonant. Thus, the prefix shows up as 'n' on words that start with t or d, e.g. ntaba 'sheep', but as 'm' on words that start with b or p (e.g. mbisi 'fish').

Lingala is more a spoken language than a written language, and has several different writing systems. Most of those are ad hoc. Due to the low literacy of Lingala speakers in Lingala (in the CongoBrazzaville literacy rate in Lingala as a first language is between 10% to 30%), its popular orthography is very flexible and varies from one Congo to the other.

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Swahili Is a Bantu language that serves as a second language to various groups traditionally inhabiting parts of the East African coast. About 35% of the Swahili vocabulary derives from the Arabic language, gained through more than twelve centuries of contact with Arabic-speaking inhabitants of the coast of Zanj. It also has incorporated Persian, German, Portuguese, English and French words into its vocabulary through contact during the last five centuries. Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and Congo (DRC), where it is an official or national language. The neighboring nation of Uganda made Swahili a required subject in primary schools in 1992—although this mandate has not been well implemented—and declared it an official language in 2005 in preparation for the East African Federation. Swahili, or other closely related languages, is spoken by nearly the entire population of the Comoros and by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi, Rwanda, northern Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique and the language was still understood in the southern ports of the Red Sea and along the coasts of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf in the twentieth century. In the Guthrie non-genetic classification of Bantu languages, Swahili is included under Zone G. Although originally written in Arabic alphabet, Swahili orthography is now based on the Latin alphabet that was introduced by Christian missionaries and colonial administrators. Christian missionaries learned Swahili as the language of communication to spread the Gospel in Eastern Africa.

So, the missionaries also helped to spread the language. As a matter of fact, the first Swahili-English dictionary was prepared by a missionary. During the colonial time, Swahili was used for communication with the local inhabitants. Hence the colonial administrators pioneered the effort of standardizing the Swahili language. Zanzibar was the epicenter of culture and commerce, therefore colonial administrators selected the dialect of the Zanzibar (Unguja) town as the standard Swahili. The Unguja dialect (Kiunguja) was then used for all formal communication such as in schools, in mass media (newspapers and radio), in books and other publications.

The earliest known documents written in Swahili are letters written in Kilwa in 1711, in Arabic alphabet. They were sent to the Portuguese of Mozambique and their local allies. The original letters are now preserved in the Historical Archives of Goa, India. Another ancient written document is an epic poem in the Arabic script titled Utendi wa Tambuka (The History of Tambuka); it is dated 1728. The Latin alphabet has become standard under the influence of European colonial powers. Methali (e.g."“Haraka haraka haina baraka — Hurry hurry has no blessing"".), i.e. “wordplay, risqué or suggestive puns and lyric rhyme, are deeply inscribed in Swahili culture, in form of Swahili parables, proverbs, and allegory”.[8] Methali is uncovered globally within 'Swah' rap music. It provides the music with rich cultural, historical, and local textures and insight.

Kiswahili is the Swahili word for the Swahili language, and this is also sometimes used in English.

The name Kiswahili comes from the plural sawāḥil ( )‫سواحل‬of the Arabic word sāḥil ( ,)‫ساحل‬meaning "boundary" or "coast"), used as an adjective meaning "coastal dwellers". With the prefix ki-, it means "coastal language". Ki- is a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class that includes languages.

The word "Sahel", used for the border between the Sahara and Sudanian Savanna, is adapted from Arabic sāḥil. Kiswahili refers to the Swahili language; Waswahili refers to the people of the Swahili Coast; and Uswahili refers to the culture of the Swahili people.

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Kikongo Is the Bantu language spoken by the Bakongo and Bandundu people living in the tropical forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo and Angola. It is a tonal language and formed the base for Kituba, a Bantu creole and lingua franca throughout much of west central Africa. It was spoken by many of those who were taken from the region and sold as slaves in the Americas. For this reason, while Kongo still is spoken in the above-mentioned countries, creolized forms of the language are found in ritual speech of African-derived religions in Brazil, Jamaica, Cuba and especially and Haiti. It is also one of the sources of the Gullah people's language and the Palenquero creole in Colombia. The vast majority of present-day speakers live in Africa. There are roughly seven million native speakers of Kongo, with perhaps two million more who use it as a second language.

While the complete Christian Bible was first published in Kongo in 1905, Kongo was the earliest Bantu language which was committed to writing in Latin characters and had the earliest dictionary of any Bantu language. A catechism was produced under the authority of Diogo Gomes, a Jesuit born in Congo of Portuguese parents in 1557, but no version of it exists today. In 1624, Mateus Cardoso, another Portuguese Jesuit, edited and published a Kongo translation of the Portuguese catechism of Marcos Jorge.

The preface informs us that the translation was done by Kongo teachers from São Salvador (modern Mbanza Kongo) and was probably partially the work of Félix do Espírito Santo (also a Kongo). The dictionary was written in about 1648 for the use of Capuchin missionaries and the principal author was Manuel Reboredo, a secular priest from Kongo (who became a Capuchin as Francisco de São Salvador). In the back of this dictionary is found a sermon of two pages written only in Kongo. The dictionary has some 10,000 words.

It is commonly accepted that the Kituba variant, also called Kikongo ya Leta (Kikongo of the government) is the language used in the administration in the provinces of Kongo Central (which is inhabited by the Bakongo), Kwango and Kwilu. Kituba has become a vernacular language in many urban

Tshiluba Tshiluba is a member of the Bantu language family spoken by about six million people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where it is one of the national languages along with Lingála, Kiswahili and Kikongo. It is spoken mainly in Western and Eastern Kasai. Other names for the language include Cilubà, Luba, Luba-Kasai and Luba-Lulua. The Tshiluba word, Ilunga, is apparently the world's most difficult word to translate. It means "a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time".

Congo Bongo | November 18, 2010

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The Vision Action Centre of Masina

By Nelson Arias-Martinez

The World Health Organization (WHO, 2004) estimates that in the Central Africa region, 1.2% of the population suffers from blindness; and another 3% are visually handicapped. Extrapolating from these figures, it is estimated that approximately 60,000 residents of Masina suffer from chronic visual impairment. Until May, 2010, access to qualified ophthalmologists and safe surgery were nonexistent.

The Vision Action Centre of Masina can correct cataracts and simple glaucoma, among other eye diseases. With support from the German Technical Cooperation, the Centre’s newly trained staff and renovated facility opened it doors to the public in May 2010. The Centre aims to cure 4,000 cataracts per year, providing quality and affordable ophthalmological screening and out-patient surgery. From June to August 31, the Centre completed 2,303 consultations and 129 operations.

The Centre is also establishing five satellite sites strategically located throughout Kinshasa; each site will have trained staff and equipment to evaluate patients and refer them to the Masina Centre for out-patient surgery if required.

During my recent tour of the facility, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality standards, hygiene, and attention provided to the patients. The Centre includes a large waiting room, consultation rooms with modern equipment, a pharmacy, a cafeteria, laboratories, and two operating theaters. The Centre is run by local staff including 3 ophthalmologists, 5 nurse practitioners, 27 nurses, and 5 administrative staff. A coordinator and two field supervisors oversee the five satellite sites.

The Centre is overseen by the administrative director, Mr. Jean-Claude Derivaux.

The standard charge for a consultation visit is between 2,000 and 6,000 Congolese francs; out-patient surgery charges vary according to the complexity of the surgery. However, in order to ensure that fees are not a barrier, the Centre has a sliding fee scale and in some cases can provide services free of charge.

The Centre is located on N. Bosange Venue 50, Commune de Masina Quarter 3 / Ciforco, Kinshasa, is open for consultations Monday to Friday 8:00 am at 5:00 pm.

No advance appointment is necessary and patients are seen on a first come first serve basis. For more information regarding the Centre's services, please contact Mr. Jean Claude at 099 122 0429.

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AERWA BAZAAR Jewelry, Handicrafts, Fabrics, Painting, Ceramics and more…

Saturday, November 27 0900 – 1400 African Queen on JAO Compound

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Sunday

TASOK Musical

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International4 Women’s Club Christmas Bazaar

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Thanksgiving Day USA

TASOK Musical

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TASOK Musical

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