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class="post-22307 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-difficult-words category-lessons">
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Using ‘nde’ and ‘ata’

Two useful words nde and ata will allow us to expand even more the conversations we can have in Lingala.

The word ata simply means even or even though. It is used very similarly to how we use it in English:

ata ntango akotala buku oyo, akotanga yango te

Here we use it to mean even at the time he/she sees this book, they won’t read it. We can also combine the word ata with eloko and moko to create some useful expressions:

ata eloko moko tenothingeven thing one not
ata moko teno oneeven one not
ata moto moko tenobodyeven person one not

These expressions are used regularly in Lingala and add a little more naturalness to the sound of our Lingala when we use them correctly.

The second word, nde, is also very useful to Lingala speakers. It basically means then, but is used in a number of interesting ways. Notice some:

Luka azali koyangela te, nde Marc mokonzi ya ekolo oyoLuke isn’t ruling, then it is Mark is the king of this nationLuke he is ruling not, then Mark king of nation this
ezali bato nde oyo bazali na esengothen it is the people who are happyit is people then this they are with joy
Justine nde ayebaki yangoit is then Justine that knew itJustine then she knew it

Look out for how nde is used and you will see the interesting ways that it emphasizes the content of the sentence.

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The Comparative Verb ‘-lek-‘

Comparisons are important in all languages, and Lingala has a single word that allows us to do show comparison of something being better or less than something else. This verb is –lek– and in this part of the lesson we’ll examine a few ways it is used.

LingalaEnglish (Meaning)English (Literal)
bozala na makasi koleka ngaiyou (plural) are stronger than meyou (plural) are with strength passing me
tozali koleka bangowe are better than themwe are passing them
batangaka babuku koleka bisothey are always better at reading books than we arethey are always reading books passing us

As we can see in those examples, the word –lek– used in the infinitive (koleka) simply means to pass (by), but we can use it for other English words like exceed, surpass, and go beyond.

We can also use it as we would a normal verb in this way:

LingalaEnglish (Meaning)English (Literal)
naleki ye na mayeleI am more intelligent than him/herI pass him with intelligence
Jacques aleki Armand na nguyaJames is stronger than ArmandJames he passes Armand with power
oleki biso na botondiyou (singular) are more thankful than we areyou (singular) pass us with thankfulness

Here we see that we use the verb with the object immediately after the verb, and then use na followed by the thing the person is better at.

Now notice what happens if we just use the object and subject without the thing they are better at:

LingalaEnglish (Meaning)English (Literal)
mama aleki ngaimum is better than memum she passes me

We simply are saying that the subject or object is better than the other.

What if we want to reverse the meaning and make something smaller or less important?

LingalaEnglish (Meaning)English (Literal)
moto moko aleki moke, moto mosusu aleki moneneone person is less, another person is greaterperson one he/she passes little, person other he/she passes great

Alternatively we can just use the word te on the end of the sentence to mean the person is not better.

mama aleki tata te

Here mother is not better than father.

We can also use the –lek– verb with numbers:

LingalaEnglish (Meaning)English (Literal)
bato koleka ntuku mwambe more than eighty peoplepeople passing eight

As we can see, –lek– is a very useful word and has a great many uses.

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Vocabulary – Part 7

This lesson adds slightly more words than normal, expanding your choice of nouns and verbs so you can make use of the new things we have learned.

ataeven, even thoughconjunction
–batelaprotectverb
–bengacallverb
boyangelirulershipnoun
ebandelibeginningnoun
ekolonation, countrynoun
elikyahopenoun
elokothing (physical)noun
–lekapassverb
libondeliprayer, supplicationnoun
likanisithoughtnoun
–limbolaexplainverb
liwadeathnoun
–longawin, succeedverb
–longolaremoveverb
ndethenadverb
–sakolapreachverb
–salelaserve, work forverb
–silafinishverb
–silisamake finishverb
–tambolawalkverb
–tambwisadirectverb
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Reversive ( -ol- )

An extension that we see in a number of verbs is –ol-, the reversive extension. We will explain its use only briefly here as it has limited use to new Lingala speakers.

When we look at Lingala from 50 years ago or more we see that whenever a word had an –ol– extension the meaning of the root was reversed. That still is true, however many times in Lingala we don’t use the unextended root and so to some extent the intent of the –ol– extension has been lost.

Notice some of the verbs we have that use the –ol– extension.

–limbolaexplain
–longolaremove
–tambolawalk
–yekolalearn

Knowing about this reversive extension is useful for the next section of our lesson.

The Changed Spelling of the Reversive –ol–

While the reversive –ol– extension is not an extension we need to understand extensively, we do need to know about the changes in spelling that occur because of this extension.

As mentioned in the section before we have four words we have learned previously that have the –ol– extension. Of these four words, –tambol– (meaning to walk) changes in an unusual way when we add the extension –is-, it becomes –tambwis-. In this change the meaning of the word is to cause to walk, or to direct. We notice that we lose the –ol– and it becomes –w-. This is done to many words that contain the –ol– extension and another extension is added to it.

Watch out for these changes as we continue with the lessons.

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Applicative ( -el- )

At times we may want to apply a verb to someone or something. In English we often say that something happens to or for the person. In Lingala we have the applicative extension –el– that allows us to do this.

Notice some ways we can use this extension:

nazali kosalela yoI am serving/doing to youI am working to you
abatelaka bino nyonsohe/she always protects you allhe/she always protects you all
ondimelaki Nzambeyou believed in Godyou believed to God

Many verbs can use this applicative extension, and some words in Lingala, like –batel– do not have a form without the applicative extension.

The verb –salel– is derived from –sal– and is used very often in Lingala as it carries the idea of serving someone, as well as working for somebody, or doing something for someone, or doing something to someone.

At times the –el– extension is used to reinforce or emphasize what the verb is doing. For example:

azali kotalela buku

Where –tal– normally means to look, here the –talel– means to look at, or even to examine. This is more than simply looking, but looking to understand. Here the –el– extension helps apply the action to the book.

Look at another use:

Ida ayokelaki mwasi esengo

Here we are saying not that Ida heard or listened to the woman, but with esengo being added at the end (or other similar words) we are showing that Ida felt (another of the meanings of –yok-) towards the woman joy. She could have felt anger or sadness in the same way.

So here the Lingala structure is that first the subject (Ida) takes the action (feel) to the object (woman) and then we describe what that action was. This is common in Lingala and fits with the practice of placing descriptive words after the noun or verb.

In a similar way we could say:

Luis asalelaki bango mabe

Here we mean that Luis did to them bad. We can do this in many other ways using the applicative extension.

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Reciprocal ( -an- )

In an earlier lesson we began to look at some of the verb extensions or infixes that exist in Lingala. In this lesson we again look at some verb extensions, the first of which is the reciprocal or –an-.

In English we may often use a verb and indicate it is done to each other, this is reciprocal action. In Lingala we use the –an– extension to create this same effect. Notice some examples below:

tomonanakawe always see each otherwe always see each other
likambo oyo ezali koyebanathis thing is knownthing this it is known to each other
baninga balinganakafriends that always love each otherfriends they are always loving each other

As in the examples above we can see the usefulness of this extension. It allows us to involve two or more subjects in a sentence equally. The structure is also simpler than it is in English.

In the second example above we use the –an– extension to show that the knowledge of it is known to everyone involved. This can be used generally, to refer to someone who is famous, or to people who are acquainted with each other.

In the other examples the idea is more simple. In fact is is used in an expression when leaving someone who you will see again:

tokomonana

Here it means simply that we will see each other again. 

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Doubling

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:

malamumalamureally good
mpenzampenzareally really, fully
–lobalobachatter
solosolotruly, really true
libosolibosofirstly
–lukalukareally 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.

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Vocabulary – Part 6

This lesson adds slight more words than normal, expanding your choice of nouns and verbs so you can make use of the new things we have learned in this lesson.

–bandabeginverb
bolamugoodnessnoun
bolengeyouth (abstract)noun
bomokooneness, unitynoun
bomotopersonality, characternoun
bonenegreatnessnoun
elengeyoung person, youthnoun
–kobacontinueverb
–komacome, becomeverb
lelotodaynoun
lingombachurch, religionnoun
mobekolawnoun
mobimbawholeadjective
mokolodaynoun
mokonzichief, kingnoun
–monisashow, cause to seeverb
motemaheartnoun
ndakisaexample, demonstrationnoun
–ponachooseverb
–pusanadraw near, draw closeverb
–salisahelp, make workverb
sekoforever, eternalnoun?
–yacome toverb
–yangelaruleverb
–yebisainform, make knownverb
–yokahear, feel, smellverb
–zwareceive, get, takeverb
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Abstract Nouns

In earlier lessons we have learned the words bokonzi and bolingo. Along with the word bomoi, these words are nouns that are an abstract idea, that is they don’t physically exist as things so as a human or a car does.

In many cases, abstract are formed from other words in Lingala. You can see that those three words have the prefix bo– and generally they don’t have a different plural form.

The word bolingo is derived from the word –ling– meaning to love. Therefore bolingo means is the quality of love. Similarly, the word bokonzi comes from one of our new vocabulary words: mokonzi, meaning chief or king. These two examples show us that abstract nouns are normally formed by simply replacing the prefix of the original word with the bo– prefix.

n the following table notice some other abstract nouns that can be formed:

malamugood, wellbolamugoodness
monenegreat, bigbonenegreatness, bigness
elengeyoung person, youthbolengeyouth (abstract – i.e. in our youth)
mokoonebomokooneness, unity
motopersonbomotopersonality, character

Notice in the last two examples, the prefix bo– is put in front of the regular prefix mo-. This only happens occasionally in Lingala and is often done when the word is a shorter word in length.

Many other words can be formed in this way. Look out for others in the coming lessons.

Note: The word bomoi doesn’t have a word that is is derived from, but it does share the same abstract idea as life is not a physical thing we can point to.

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Reflexive ( -mi- )

Another extension in Lingala is the –mi– extension, called the Reflexive. This is used for verbs that ‘reflect’ back the action at the one doing it. We do this in English by saying things like: I taught myself, he will see himself, they are helping themselves, etc.

We can do this very simply in Lingala using the reflexive extension. Notice:

namiteyakiI taught myself
akomimonahe/she will see him/herself
bazali komisalisathey are helping themselves

You can see that we use the –mi– extension before the root of the verb. This is the only extension that we do this with. All other extensions are placed after the root of the verb. Therefore we write the format of a verb using the reflexive extension this way:

PREFIX + mi + ROOT + SUFFIX

Although we previously spoke (in Lesson 2) about using the a pronoun along with the word moko to create idea of self (so ngai moko means myself), we should not use this to try and replace the reflexive tense in a verb.

Another useful verb that uses the –mi– extension is komipesa, meaning to give yourself, that is to dedicate.