Kongo language

People

Prior to the Berlin Conference, the people called themselves "Bisi Kongo" (plural) and "Mwisi Kongo" (singular). Today they call themselves "Bakongo" (pl.) and "Mukongo" (sing.).

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 (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. The principal author was Manuel Robredo, a secular priest from Kongo (after he became a Capuchin, he was named Francisco de São Salvador). 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 (from Great Britain) 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 (or Ndo Nzwawu Nlemvo; Dom João in Portuguese) and Miguel NeKaka, marked the standardisation of Kikongo.

A large proportion of the people at San Salvador, and in its neighbourhood, pronounce s and z before i as sh and j; for the sound sh, the letter x was adopted (as in Portuguese), while z before i was written as j. Our books are read over a much wider area than the district of San Salvador, and in those parts where s and z remain unchanged before i, the use of x and j has proved a difficulty; it has therefore been decided to use s and z only, and in those parts where the sound of these letters is softened before i they will be naturally softened in pronunciation, and where they remain unchanged they will be pronounced as written.

— William Holman Bentley, Dictionary and grammar of the Kongo language as spoken at San Salvador, the ancient capital of the old Kongo Empire (1887)

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 (H11). Ethnologue 16 counts Ndingi (H14) and Mboka (H15) as dialects of Kongo, though it acknowledges they may be distinct languages.

Bastin, Coupez and Man's classification of the language (as Tervuren) 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 (also called Kiyombe) H16c
  • Fiote H16d
  • Western Kikongo H16d
  • Bwende H16e
  • Ladi (Lari) 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 (for example, 1. Civili is better understood by Kiyombe- and Iwoyo-speakers than by Kisikongo- or Kimanianga-speakers; 2. Kimanianga is better understood by Kikongo of Boko and Kintandu-speakers than by Civili or Iwoyo-speakers).

Phonology

1. The phoneme can occur, but is rarely used.
2. 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 (singular and plural) except for the locative and infinitive classes which do not admit plurals.

NB: Noun prefixes may or may not change from one Kikongo variant to another (e.g. class 7: the noun prefix ci is used in civili, iwoyo or ciladi (lari) and the noun prefix ki is used in kisikongo, kiyombe, kizombo, kimanianga,...).

Conjugation

NB: Not all variants of Kikongo have completely the same personal pronouns and when conjugating verbs, the personal pronouns become stressed pronouns (see below and/or the references posted).

Conjugating the verb (mpanga in Kikongo) to be (kukala or kuba) in the present:

In Kikongo, the verb (mpanga) "to have" is said as kukala ye also kuba na. The verb kuvua/kuvwa means "to possess" or "to have". It is conjugated in the present indicative as follows:

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

Vocabulary

English words of Kongo origin

• The southern Black American English word "goober" comes from Kongo nguba, meaning "peanut".
• The southern Black American English word "finda", from the Hoodoo tradition, comes from the Kongo word mfinda, meaning "the great forest".
• The southern Black American English word "mojo", from the Hoodoo tradition, comes from the Kongo word mooyo, meaning "to the spirits that dwelt within magical charms".
• The Black American popular music terms "funk" and "funky" may be from the Kongo word lu-fuki.

In popular culture

The roller coaster Kumba at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay in Tampa, Florida, gets its name from the Kongo word for "roar".

Sample text

According to Filomão CUBOLA, article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Fiote translates to:

Bizingi bioso bisiwu ti batu bambutukanga mu kidedi ki buzitu ayi kibumswa. Bizingi-bene, batu, badi diela ayi tsi-ntima, bafwene kuzingila mbatzi-na-mbatzi-yandi mu mtima bukhomba.

"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."

Literature

• Mgr. Jean Cuvelier, Nkutama a mvila za Makanda, Impr. Mission Catholique, 1934
• A. Fu-kiau kia Bunseki-Lumanisa, N'Kongo Ye Nza Yakun'zungidila : Nza-Kôngo, Office National de la Recherche et de Développement, Kinshasa, 1969 (Réimpression 2021, Paari éditeur).
• Rodrigue Tchamna and Imanuel Kimbuala Hemsey, Wasala wûnu, si kadia mbazi. Wavuata kimôlo wûnu, si kalaba mbazi, Cameroun BD, 2019.
• Jussie Nsana and Armel Bemba, M'tekolo, Nsana-Arts Butsiele and Ecole Les Bourgeons, 2020.
• Fernando Ndombele Kidima Tadi, Malongi ma mpila mu mpila muna ndinga kikongo, Mayamba, 2023.