Kongo language

Kongo or Kikongo is one of the Bantu languages spoken by the Kongo people living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, Gabon, and Angola. It is a tonal language. The vast majority of present-day speakers live in Africa. There are roughly seven million native speakers of Kongo in the above-named countries. An estimated five million more speakers use it as a second language.
Historically, it was spoken by many of those Africans who for centuries were taken captive, transported across the Atlantic, and sold as slaves in the Americas. For this reason, creolized forms of the language are found in ritual speech of Afro-American religions, especially in Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Suriname. It is also one of the sources of the Gullah language, which formed in the Low Country and Sea Islands of the United States Southeast, and a major source of the Palenquero language of Colombia.

Geographic distribution

Kikongo was the language of the Kingdom of Kongo prior to the creation of Angola by the Portuguese Crown in 1575. The Berlin Conference among major European powers divided the rest of the kingdom into three territories. These are now parts of the DRC, the Republic of the Congo, and Gabon.
Kikongo is the base for the Creole language Kituba, also called Kikongo de l'État and Kikongo ya Leta.
The constitution of the Republic of the Congo uses the name Kituba, and Democratic Republic of the Congo uses the term Kikongo. This can be explained by the fact that Kikongo ya Leta is often mistakenly called Kikongo.
Kikongo and Kituba are spoken in:

South of Republic of the Congo:
* Kikongo and Kituba:
** Kouilou,
** Niari,
** Bouenza,
** Lékoumou,
** south of Brazzaville,
** Pointe-Noire,
* Kikongo :
** Pool;
South-west of Democratic Republic of the Congo:
* Kikongo and Kikongo ya Leta:
** Kongo Central,
** a part of Kinshasa,
* Kikongo ya Leta:
** Kwilu,
** Kwango,
** Mai-Ndombe,
** far west Kasaï;
North of Angola:
* Kikongo :
** Cabinda,
** Uíge,
** Zaire,
** north of Bengo and north of Cuanza Norte;
South-West of Gabon.
* Kikongo :
** Nyanga,
** Ngounié
Presence in the Americas

Many African slaves transported in the Atlantic slave trade spoke Kikongo. Its influence can be seen in many creole languages in the diaspora, such as:

Brazil
*Cupópia
**Salto de Pirapora
Colombia
*Palenquero
**San Basilio de Palenque
Cuba
*Habla Congo/Habla Bantu
**None; liturgical language of the Afro-Cuban Palo religion.
Haiti
*Haitian Creole
**Haiti
**Bahamas
**Cuba
**Dominican Republic
**United States
*Langaj
**None; liturgical language of the Haitian Vodou religion.
Suriname
*Saramaccan language
**Boven Suriname
**Brokopondo
**Paramaribo
**French Guiana
**Netherlands
United States
*Gullah
**Gullah-Geechee Corridor
*Louisiana Creole
**Louisiana; and neighboring states.
People

Prior to the Berlin Conference, the people called themselves "Bisi Kongo" and "Mwisi Kongo". Today they call themselves "Bakongo" and "Mukongo".

Writing

Kongo was the earliest Bantu language to be written in Latin characters. Portuguese created a dictionary in Kongo, the first of any Bantu language. A catechism was produced under the authority of Diogo Gomes, who was born in 1557 in Kongo to Portuguese parents and became a Jesuit priest. No version of that survives today.
In 1624, Mateus Cardoso, another Portuguese Jesuit, edited and published a Kongo translation of the Portuguese catechism compiled by Marcos Jorge. The preface says that the translation was done by Kongo teachers from São Salvador and was probably partially the work of Félix do Espírito Santo.
The dictionary was written in about 1648 for the use of Capuchin missionaries. The principal author was Manuel Robredo, a secular priest from Kongo. The back of this dictionary includes a two-page sermon written in Kongo. The dictionary has some 10,000 words.
In the 1780s, French Catholic missionaries to the Loango coast created additional dictionaries. Bernardo da Canecattim published a word list in 1805.
Baptist missionaries who arrived in Kongo in 1879 developed a modern orthography of the language.
American missionary W. Holman Bentley arranged for his Dictionary and Grammar of the Kongo Language to be published by the University of Michigan in 1887. In the preface, Bentley gave credit to Nlemvo, an African, for his assistance. He described "the methods he used to compile the dictionary, which included sorting and correcting 25,000 slips of paper containing words and their definitions." Eventually W. Holman Bentley, with the special assistance of João Lemvo, produced a complete Christian Bible in 1905.
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has published a translation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Fiote.

Standardisation

The work of English, Swedish and other missionaries in the 19th and 20th centuries, in collaboration with Kongo linguists and evangelists such as Ndo Nzuawu Nlemvo and Miguel NeKaka, marked the standardisation of Kikongo.

Linguistic classification

Kikongo belongs to the Bantu language family.
Malcolm Guthrie classified Kikongo in the language group H10, the Kongo languages. Other languages in the same group include Bembe. Ethnologue 16 counts Ndingi and Mboka as dialects of Kongo, though it acknowledges they may be distinct languages.
Bastin, Coupez and Man's classification of the language is more recent and precise than that of Guthrie on Kikongo. The former say the language has the following dialects:

Kikongo group H16
*Southern Kikongo H16a
*Central Kikongo H16b
*Yombe H16c
*Fiote H16d
*Western Kikongo H16d
*Bwende H16e
*Ladi H16f
*Eastern Kikongo H16g
*Southeastern Kikongo H16h

NB: Kisikongo is not the protolanguage of the Kongo language cluster. Not all varieties of Kikongo are mutually intelligible.

Phonology

The phoneme can occur, but is rarely used.
May also be heard as a nasal sound.

There is contrastive vowel length. /m/ and /n/ also have syllabic variants, which contrast with prenasalized consonants.

Grammar

Noun classes

Kikongo has a system of 18 noun classes in which nouns are classified according to noun prefixes. Most of the classes go in pairs except for the locative and infinitive classes which do not admit plurals.

Classes	Noun prefixes	Characteristics	Examples
1	mu-, n-	humans	muntu/muuntu/mutu/muutu
2	ba-, wa-, a-	plural form of the class 1...	bantu/baantu/batu/baatu/wantu/antu
3	mu-, n-	various: plants, inanimate...	muti/nti , nlangu
4	mi-, n-, i-	plural form of the class 3...	miti/minti/inti , milangu/minlangu
5	di-, li-	various: body parts, vegetables...	didezo/lideso/lidezu/didezu
6	ma-	various : liquids, plural form of the class 5...	madezo/medeso/madeso/madezu, maza/maamba/mamba/maampa/masi/masa
7	ki-, ci '-, tsi -, i-	various: language, inanimate...	kikongo/cikongo/tsikongo/ikongo, kikuku/cikuuku/tsikûku
8'	bi-, i-, yi-, u-	plural form of the class 7...	bikuku/bikuuku/bikûku
9	Ø-, n-, m-, yi-, i-	various: animals, pets, artefacts...	nzo/nso, ngulu
10	Ø-, n-, m-, si-, zi-, tsi-	plural form of the classes 9, 11...	si nzo/zi nzo/zinzo/tsi nso, si ngulu/zi ngulu/zingulu
11	lu-	various: animals, artefacts, sites, attitudes, qualities, feeling...	lulendo, lupangu/lupaangu
13	tu-	plural form of the classes 7 11...	tupangu/tupaangu
14	bu-, wu-	various: artefacts, sites, attitudes, qualities...	bumolo/bubolo
15	ku-, u-	infinitives	kutuba/kutub'/utuba, kutanga/kutaangë/utanga
15a	ku-	body parts...	kulu, koko/kooko
6	ma-	plural form of the class 15a...	malu, moko/mooko
4	mi-	plural form of the class 15a...	miooko/mioko
16	va-, ga-, fa-	locatives	va nzo, fa, ga/ha, va
17	ku-	locatives	ku vata, kuna
18	mu-	locatives	mu nzo
19	fi-, mua/mwa-	diminutives	fi nzo , fi nuni , mua nuni

NB: Noun prefixes may or may not change from one Kikongo variant to another.

Conjugation

Personal pronouns	Translation
Mono	I
Ngeye	You
Yandi	He or she
Kima	It
Yeto / Beto	We
Yeno / Beno	You
Yawu / Bawu	They
Bima	They

NB: Not all variants of Kikongo have completely the same personal pronouns and when conjugating verbs, the personal pronouns become stressed pronouns.
Conjugating the verb to be in the present:

ngiena / Mono ngina	, I am
wena / Ngeye wina / wuna / una	, you are
wena / Yandi kena / wuna / una	, he or she is
kiena	, it is
tuena / Yeto tuina / tuna	, we are
luena / Yeno luina / luna	, you are
bena / Yawu bena	, they are
biena	, they are

Conjugating the verb to have in the present :

mvuidi	, I have
vuidi	, you have
vuidi	, he or she has
tuvuidi	, we have
luvuidi	, you have
bavuidi	, they have

NB: In Kikongo, the conjugation of a tense to different persons is done by changing verbal prefixes. These verbal prefixes are also personal pronouns. However, not all variants of Kikongo have completely the same verbal prefixes and the same verbs. The ksludotique site uses several variants of Kikongo.