In Lingala the structure of sentences is often very similar to English. Some things, though, are a little different.
Descriptive words, such as adverbs and adjectives are placed after the noun or action they are describing. Notice how this works with adjectives and some of our vocabulary for this lesson:
| mwasi kitoko | beautiful woman | woman beautiful |
| Nzambe monene | great God | God great/big |
| mwana malamu | good child | child good |
Notice that the adjectives (kitoko, monene, malamu) are placed after the nouns (mwasi, Nzambe, mwana). This is the correct grammar for almost every adjective in Lingala.
Also, in Lingala there are no words for a, an, or the. So this means the word likambo can mean when translating into English:
thing
a thing
the thing
We learn what it means by looking at the context of the surrounding words and sentences.