Kituba
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Kituba is a widely used lingua franca in Central Africa. It is based on Kikongo, a family of closely related Bantoid languages (some of which aren't mutually intelligible). It is an official language in Congo-Brazzaville and Congo-Kinshasa.
Sometimes Kituba is called a creole language but it's not entirely accurate, because it lacks the distinction between superstrate and substrate influence that is typical of creole development.
Names
Kituba is known with many names among its speakers. In the Republic of Congo it is called Munukutuba or Kituba. The former is grammatically incorrect phrase which means literally "I to speak". The latter means simply "speech". The name Kituba is used in the constitution of the Republic of Congo.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo it is called Kikongo ya leta i.e. Kikongo of the state administration, but it is often called in short Kikongo especially out of the region of ethnic Bakongo people. The constitution of the Democratic Republic of Congo lists Kikongo as one of the national languages. In fact it refers to Kikongo ya leta i.e. Kituba, because a translation of the constitution itself is written in Kituba but no translation exists in Kikongo!
There are also other historical names such as Kibulamatadi, Kikwango, Ikeleve and Kizabave but they have largely fell out of use. In the academic circles the language is called Kikongo-Kituba.
Geographic distribution
The majority of Kituba speakers live in Congo-Kinshasa. 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 the largest language of Congo-Brazzaville. It is spoken in the souther half of the country, approximately south of Lefini.
The status of Kituba in Angola is not known. It is probable that it is understood by some of the Bakongo people, especially those who have lived in Congo-Brazzaville or Congo-Kinshasa as refugees or otherwise.
Official status
Kituba is a national language in Congo-Brazzaville and Congo-Kinshasa. In practice the term national language means that it is a language of regional administration and elementary education.
History
First Kituba developed downriver Congo, an area which is inhabited by the Bakongo.
There are several theories on how Kituba came into being. A theory claims that it evolved already at the times 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 trade 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 (hence the name Kikwango). Yet another theory emphasizes the construction of the Matadi-Kinshasa railroad at the end of the 19th century, 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.
Regardless of the genesis, Kituba has 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.
Phonology
Vowels
Kituba has five vowel phonemes: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/. They are very similar to the vowels of Spanish and Italian. 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
- /o/ is pronounced like the first part of the "o" in American English home, or like a tenser version of "o" in British English "lot"
- /u/ is pronounced like the "u" in haiku
Consonants
| bilabial | labiodental | dental | alveolar | postalveolar | palatal | velar | glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plosive | b | d | g | |||||
| prenasalized | mb | mv | nd | nz | ŋg | |||
| nasal | ||||||||
| fricative | v | z | ||||||
| lateral | ||||||||
| approximant |
Notes:
- Word-initial voiceless prenasalized consonants are reduced to simple consonants in some dialects. For example mpimpa and nkento become pimpa and kento in Kituba of Pointe-Noire.
- Some dialects add stop to prenasalized alveolar fricatives so that for example Kinsasa and nzila become Kintsasa and ndzila.
- Alveolar fricatives may become postalveolar before /i/.
Lexicon
The bulk of Kituba words come from Kikongo. Other Bantu languages have influenced it too including Kiyaka, Kiyansi, Lingala and Swahili. In addition there are a lot of words from French and some words from Portuguese and English.
- sandúku (swa. sanduku)
- matáta (swa. matata)
- letá (fra. l'état)
- kamiyó (fra. camion)
- sodá/solodá (fra. soldat)
- masínu (fra: machine)
- mísa (por. missa)
- kilápi (por. lápis)
- katekisimu (eng. catechism)
- bóyi (eng. houseboy)
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