Language
The language of the Kongo people is called Kikongo, which is divided into many dialects which are sufficiently diverse that people from distant dialects, such as speakers of Kivili dialect (on the northern coast) and speakers of Kisansolo (the central dialect) would have trouble understanding each other. Many Bakongo also speak other African languages and European languages. In Angola, there are a few who did not learn to speak Kikongo because Portuguese rules of assimilation during he colonial period was directed against learning native languages, though most Bakongo held on to the language. Most Angolan Kongo also speak Portuguese and those near the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo also speak French. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo most also speak French and others speak either Lingala, a common lingua franca in Western Congo, Kikongo ya Leta (generally known as Kituba particularly in DR Congo), a creole form of Kikongo spoken widely in the Republic of the Congo, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Angola.
Read more about this topic: Kongo People
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth.”
—Elias Canetti (b. 1905)
“The hypothesis I wish to advance is that ... the language of morality is in ... grave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”
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