We have learned previously words that can help us to emphasize something, such as the words mingi and mpenza. These words are added after the noun or verb to emphasize the extra amount or importance of something.
Lingala does have another way of adding emphasis to an idea in the form of doubling the verb root or the word. Notice some examples:
| malamumalamu | really good |
| mpenzampenza | really really, fully |
| –lobaloba | chatter |
| solosolo | truly, really true |
| libosoliboso | firstly |
| –lukaluka | really look, search, research |
We see that in all these cases the idea is emphasized. So in solosolo, we get the idea of it really being true. In libosoliboso, we see that it must be first, before anything else. in –lobaloba we see that the verb is now the action of a lot of talking, which in English is chattering.
When verb roots are doubled, the doubled root acts as any normal verb for example:
balukalukaki mpe bamonaki bango
Here the sense of the sentence is they searched and the saw (found) them.