Kituba language: Difference between revisions

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.

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.

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 emphasize 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.