Category: 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:

malamu	good, well	bolamu	goodness
monene	great, big	bonene	greatness, bigness
elenge	young person, youth	bolenge	youth (abstract – i.e. in our youth)
moko	one	bomoko	oneness, unity
moto	person	bomoto	personality, 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.

We have already learned a number of nouns in the preceding two lessons, but so far they have all been in the singular form. How do we say the plural form of nouns in Lingala?

Lingala (as is true of a number of African languages) makes changes not to the suffix – or end – of a word, but rather to the prefix – or start – of a word. Notice the following examples:

bomoi	life	bomoi	lives
likambo	thing	makambo	things
mobali	man/husband	mibali	men/husbands
moto	person	bato	persons/people
mwana	child	bana	children
mwasi	woman/wife	basi	women/wives
nkombo	name	bankombo	names
nsango	news (singular)	bansango	news (plural)
ntango	time	ntango	times
nzambe	god	banzambe	gods

Notice the way the prefix changes to make the word plural. Though it may at first seem random and unrelated, there is a consistency in how most plural nouns are created in Lingala. The following table which breaks down these plural classes or groups:

Singular Prefix	Plural Prefix	Type	Example
mo–	ba–	person/people	moto / bato
mo-	mi–	object (thing)	motó / mitó
li–	ma–	idea (thing)	likambo / makambo
e–	bi–	object (thing)	eloko / biloko
–	ba–	thing (nasal, nz-, mb-, etc.)	nzambe / banzambe
lo–	n–	thing	lokasa / nkasa
lo–	ma–	thing	loboko / maboko

There are a few variations of these combinations, but generally most fall into one of these categories.

When we take the numbers that we learned earlier, we can start to use these plural nouns along with plural verbs (when needed) to create new sentences. See how the numbers are placed after the noun, just as we do with adjectives:

tozali na bana misato	we have three children	we are with children three
bato mibale basali	two people worked	people two they worked