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Lingala is a language which gained its modern form in the colonial period, with the push of missionaries to standardize and teach a local lingua franca. It was originally spoken in the upper Congo river area but rapidly spread to the middle Congo area and eventually became the major Bantu language in Kinshasa.
A 2021 survey found that 74% of the population could speak French, making it the most widely spoken language in the country. [237] In Kinshasa, 67% of the population in 2014 could read and write French, and 68.5% could speak and understand it. [238] In 2024, there were around 12 million native French speakers in the country. [239]
Lingala (or Ngala, Lingala: Lingála) is a Bantu language spoken in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the northern half of the Republic of the Congo, in their capitals, Kinshasa and Brazzaville, and to a lesser degree as a trade language or because of emigration in neighbouring Angola or Central African Republic.
The five major languages in the DRC are French (official), Lingala (a lingua franca, or trade language), Swahili (more specifically Congo Swahili such as the Kingwana dialect), Kikongo ya leta or Kituba (a Kikongo-based creole language), and Tshiluba or Luba-Kasai. In total, there are over 200 languages spoken in the DRC.
Kinshasa is the largest nominally Francophone urban area globally, with French being the language of government, education, media, public services and high-end commerce, while Lingala is used as a lingua franca in the street. The city's inhabitants are popularly known as Kinois, with the term "Kinshasans" used in English terminology.
A map of the major Bantu languages in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Like many African countries, the borders were drawn up by colonial powers, and bore little relation to the actual spread of ethno-linguistic groups. There are 242 languages spoken in the country, with perhaps a similar number of ethnic groups. Broadly speaking, there ...
This is a list of countries by number of languages according to the 22nd edition of Ethnologue (2019). [ 1 ] Papua New Guinea has the largest number of languages in the world.
A language that uniquely represents the national identity of a state, nation, and/or country and is so designated by a country's government; some are technically minority languages. (On this page a national language is followed by parentheses that identify it as a national language status.) Some countries have more than one language with this ...