Kituba language

Kituba is a widely used lingua franca in Central Africa. It is a creole language based on Kikongo, a Bantu language. It is a national language in Republic of the Congo and Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Names

Kituba is known by many names among its speakers. In academic circles the language is called Kikongo-Kituba.
In the Republic of the Congo it is called Munukutuba, a phrase which means literally "I say", and is used in the Republic's 1992 constitution. The latter means "way of speaking" and is used in the 2015 constitution.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo it is called Kikongo ya leta, or Kikongo de l'État, shortened to Kileta. Confusingly, it is also called Kikongo, especially in areas that lack Kongo speakers, namely the Kwango and Kwilu Provinces. The constitution of the Democratic Republic of the Congo lists "Kikongo" as one of the national languages. The Kikongo spoken alongside Lingala in urban centres is in fact Kituba.
There are also other historical names such as Kibula-matadi,, Kikwango,, Bastard kikongo and Kizabave, but they have largely fallen out of use.

Geographic distribution

The majority of Kituba speakers live in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is spoken as the primary lingua franca in the provinces of Kongo Central, Kwango and Kwilu and to a lesser extent in Kinshasa, Mai-Ndombe and Kasai.
Kituba is spoken in the southern of the Republic of Congo, in regions of Kouilou, Pointe-Noire, Niari, Bouenza, Lékoumou and in the capital Brazzaville. Lingala is more popular in the north.
Kituba is also spoken in the northern part of Angola, since modern nations cut across the lines of tribal areas and ancient kingdoms, and northern Angola borders the Kwango Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo which is a strong Kituba-speaking area.
Although mutually intelligible, there are differences, mainly in vocabulary, between the eastern and western areas of The Democratic Republic of Congo, and still more between the Kituba spoken there and that spoken in Congo-Brazzaville.

Official status

Kituba is a national language in the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In practice the term national language means that it is a language of regional administration, elementary education, and business.
A national language is also one that is used for public and mass communication. National public radios and televisions in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in the Republic of Congo use Kituba as one of their main languages for evening news.

History

There are several theories on how Kituba came into being. One theory claims that it had already evolved at the time of the Kongo Kingdom as a simplified interdialectal trade language, which the European colonists subsequently took into use for regional administration. Another theory claims that a simplified trade language called Kifyoti was developed at the Portuguese coastal trading 18
post and it was later spread upstream by the Christian missionaries to the region between the Kwango and the Kasai rivers where it evolved further. Yet another theory emphasizes the construction of the Matadi–Kinshasa railroad at the end of the 1800s, which involved forced labour from West Africa, lower Congo, and the neighbouring Bandundu region. The workers had diverse linguistic backgrounds which gave birth to a grammatically simplified language.
Harold W. Fehdereau, a linguist and missionary, carried out a major linguistic survey of Kituba-speaking areas under the joint auspices of the American Bible Society and the American Mennonite Brethren Mission. He published his work in a Kituba-French-English dictionary in 1969. He traced the development of Kituba back to the 1800s or earlier, necessitated by the inter-tribal needs of the Congolese themselves, and later, their relationship with slave traders. Then in the early 1900s, the Belgian and French colonization of the area brought further need for a convenient language of communication with the Congolese. He admits that we do not have a very complete picture of the development of Kituba before the 1930s, when it came into wide use by Christian missionaries. He notes that many today have grown up knowing Kituba as their mother tongue, and at the same time, it has reached some complexity of grammar unusual to pidgin languages. He notes that there is an increasing tendency, particularly in the western Kituba-speaking region, to borrow words from French, adding Kituba prefixes and suffixes for everyday usage.
Regardless of the genesis, Kituba established itself in the large towns that were found during the colonial period between 1885 and 1960. Kituba is spoken as the primary language in the large Bakongo cities of Moanda, Boma, Matadi, Pointe-Noire, Dolisie, Nkayi, and Brazzaville and also in large non-Bakongo cities of Bandundu, Kikwit, and Ilebo. It is the main language spoken throughout the modern provinces of Kwango and Kasai. A dialect called 'Monokutuba' is spoken in Congo-Brazzaville.
The first portions of the Bible were published in 1934, followed by the New Testament in 1950. A revision was published in 1957. The complete Bible was published in 1982, all by the Bible Society of Congo.
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has published a translation of Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Kituba.

Differences between Kikongo and Kituba

Some examples of differences between Kikongo and Kituba :
1. Conjugation: In Kikongo, the conjugation of a tense to different persons is done by changing verbal prefixes, unlike in Kituba:
Example: verb "to be" conjugated in the present in Kikongo and Kituba:

English	Kikongo	Kikongo	Kituba
To Be		or	or Kuvanda
I am	I ke	Nkele	Munu / Mono Ke
You are	Ke	Kele	Nge Ke
He / She is	Ke	Kele	Yandi Ke
We are	Tu ke	Tukele	Beto Ke
You are	Lu ke	Lukele	Beno Ke
They are	Ba ke / Be ke	Bakele	Bau / Bo Ke

2. Negative form

Kikongo	Kituba
K'usumbidi KO / Kusumbidi KO : You did not buy	Yandi ke na nsoni VÉ : He / She has no shame
KA tusingasala KO : We will not work	Munu / Mu ke mona nge VÉ : I cannot see you
Luzingu lu kéli KUVÉ tok’ luboti, si sènde vandi si kéli : Life is only made of roses, but also of thorns Etc.	Beto ke dia VÉ : We do not eat Yandi vuandaka kusala VÉ : He / She was not used to working Etc.

3. The way to say "My name is" is different :

My name is in Kikongo	My name is in Kituba
Nkumbu ame / Nkumbu ami / Nkumbu ani / Dizina diame / Dizina diami / Dizina diani / Lizina liami, etc.	Zina na mono kele / Nkumbu ya mono kele / Nkumbu ya munu kele

4. Noun classes : noun prefixes are not completely the same

Phonology

Vowels

Kituba has five vowel phonemes: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/. They are very similar to the vowels of Spanish. Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows:

/a/ is pronounced like the "a" in father
/e/ is pronounced like the "e" in bed
/i/ is pronounced like the "i" in ski or ring
/o/ is pronounced like the first part of the "o" in home, or like a tenser version of "o" in "lot"
/u/ is pronounced like the "oo" of fool
Consonants

;Notes:

Word-initial voiceless prenasalized consonants are reduced to simple consonants in some dialects: and become and in Kituba of Pointe-Noire.
Some dialects add stop to prenasalized alveolar fricatives: and become and ndzila.
Alveolar fricatives may become postalveolar before /i/.
Grammar

Pronouns

Kituba has subject and object pronouns. The object pronouns are used in place of subject pronouns when the subject is being emphasized.

I love you in kituba

Mu zola nge / Munu me zola nge / Mu me zola nge / Me zola nge / Mono ke zola nge

Nouns

Kituba has kept by and large the noun classes of ethnic Kikongo with some modifications. The classes 9 and 11 have in effect merged with the singular class with zero prefix, and their plural is formed with generic plural class prefix ba-.

Verbs

Kituba has a well-developed verbal system involving grammatical tense and aspect. Most verb forms have long and short versions. The long forms are used in formal written communication whereas the short forms have developed for spoken communication.
The irregular conjugation of the verb or is presented in the table below. It is the only irregular verb in Kituba.

Tense	Long form	Short form	Example	Translation
Present and immediate future	kele	ke	Yau kele nkosi.	It is a lion.
Future	kele/ata kuvanda	ke/ta vanda	Mu ta vuanda tata.	I will be a father.
Present progressive	kele kuvandaka	ke vandaka	Nge ke vuandaka zoba.	You are being stupid.
Future progressive	ata kuvandaka	ta vandaka	Beno ta vuandaka ya kukuela.	You will be married.
Past	vanda		Yandi vuanda kuna.	He was there.
Past progressive	vandaka		Beto vuandaka banduku.	We used to be friends.
Past perfect	mene kuvanda	me vanda	Yandi me vuanda na Matadi.	He was in Matadi.
Past perfect progressive	mene kuvandaka	me vandaka	Yandi me vuandaka mulongi.	She has been a teacher.

All other verbs are conjugated with the help of auxiliary verbs. The conjugation of the verb is presented in the table below.

Tense	Long form	Short form	Example	Translation
Present and immediate future	kele kusala	ke sala	Yandi ke sala.	He works. / He will work.
Present progressive	kele kusalaka	ke salaka	Yandi ke salaka.	He is working.
Past	salaka	salaka	Yandi salaka.	He worked.
Immediate past	mene sala	me sala	Yandi me sala.	He has worked.
Immediate past progressive	mene salaka	me salaka	Yandi me salaka.	He has been working.
Past progressive	vuandaka kusala	va sala	Yandi vuandaka kusala.	He used to work.
Narrative	sala	sala	-	-
Future	ata sala	ta sala	Yandi ta sala.	He will work.
Future progressive	ata salaka	ta salaka	Yandi ta salaka.	He will be working.