Lingala

Welcome to the Lingala page, featuring books for learning Lingala the most important of the four national languages of the Democratic Republic of Congo! Lingala is a Bantu language spoken throughout northwestern part of the Congo region, as well as Angola and the Central African Republic. Lingala originated from Bobangi, which was used as a regional trade language. After colonization by the Belgian, Bobangi was used for missionary and administrative purposes, where it was called Bangala, and it evolved into a common vernacular form of local Bantu languages, with simplified grammar and morphology. There are liberal contributions in vocabulary from local languages, French, and Portuguese. Lingala has about 2 million native speakers, and about 8 million speak it as a second language. If you have any questions or can't find what you need, please e-mail us at .

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Featured Products

Lingala Parallel Texts
David R. Woods
This book is designed for the upper intermediate to advanced English speaking student of Lingala, and contains Lingala texts of two long pieces of prose fiction and a short play with an English translation of each, and cassette recordings read by a native Lingala speaker. An introduction by the translator provides background on the Lingala language and a summary of the three texts that make up the book. With six 90 min. audio cassette recordings, and a 2002 text, 264 pages, hardbound.

Book and 6 cassettes
$175

Lingala

Lingala - English Dictionary
Lumana Pashi, Alan Turnbull
This general-purpose dictionary contains 12,000 headwords. There are extensive cross-references to synonyms, antonyms, and related words. Examples of usage or contexts are supplied for 10% of the entries. Users will find English definitions of the basic word stock of modern Lingala as used in daily communication. 1994, 256 pages, hardbound.

$108