Lingala Language


Mbote or Oza bien? = These are some of the first words learned by those who have an interest in the learning Lingala.

Lingala is the native language of officially approximately 45 million speakers (certaintly more), It is spoken mainly in the western and northern parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and its capital Kinshasa, in the central and northern parts of Republic of the Congo and its capital Brazzaville and in northern Angola (Uige, Cabinda, Lunda Norte, Malange etc).

The Lingala language can be divided into several regiolects or sociolects. The major regional varieties are northwestern Lingala, Kinshasa Lingala and Brazzaville Lingala.

This website provides some basic information for English speakers with any level of interest, especially to people who may want to visit DRC or have interactions with Congolese people.

The following guide will let you try out some basic Lingala (from DRC):

DRC map?
Map and description from Wikipedia and Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures (APiCS)

Learn Lingala

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African Languages on Mofeko

West Africa


- Ìgbò
- Wolof
- Yorùbá

East Africa


- Chichewa (Nyanja)
- Kinyarwanda (Ikinyarwanda)
- Kiswahili

Central Africa


- Chokwe (Wuchokwe)
- Ibinda (Fiote)
- Kikongo
- Lingala
- Tshiluba

Southern Africa


- Malagasy
- Naro (Senaro)
- Nyaneka-Humbi
- Sekaukau
- Setswana (Tswana)
- Shona (chiShona)
- Umbundu (South Mbundu)
- IsiXhosa (Xhosa)
- IsiZulu (Zulu)