In Lingala questions are created by slightly raising the intonation, or sound, at the end of the sentence. For yes/no type questions, sentence structure doesn’t change in comparison to a statement. So:
azali mobali te
translates into English as he is not a man (literally: he is man not). Whereas:
azali mobali te?
translates into English as is he not a man? (literally: he is man not?). This makes asking a yes/no type question a lot easier in Lingala. Think of the statement you want to know, then raise the intonation to make it a question.
Lingala does have some words that help with questions, two of which are in our vocabulary for this lesson: nani and nini. Nani means who and nini means what. These are used by placing them at the end of a sentence in the following way:
| mobali nini? | what man? | man what? |
| ozali nani? | who are you? | you are who? |