Category: Questions

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?

There are more words we have included in this lesson that can be used for questions. Let’s look at some.

First we have the word ntango which means time. This is in the sense of the time of something, not the amount of times we have done something. When used with the word nini we can use it for asking questions about when something would happen. Notice:

ntango nini osali yango?

This means when did you do it? (literally: time what you did it?). A reply to a question would be as follows:

ntango amoni yango

Here we mean when he saw it (literally: time he saw it).

Another small word that is used a lot in Lingala is mpo which means for. When used in the expression mpo na nini it means why, or literally for what. For example:

mpo na nini basali yango?

Here the sentence means why did they do it? (literally: for what they did it?). Our response would be:

mpo na yango

Or as it is in English for that. Here yango means that.

Another word in Lingala that is used for questions is ndenge which means way in the sense of the way to do something or the way something works. Along with the word nini we can use it to ask questions where we use the word how in English. Notice:

ndenge nini osali yango?

This means how did you do it? (literally: way what you did it?) We can also use the expression ndenge nini to ask the question how somebody is:

ozali ndenge nini?

In this example notice that ndenge nini is placed after the verb ozali (you are). Sometimes in Lingala ndenge nini is placed at the front of the phrase or sentence, other times at the end. This can be true of the other question words and phrases such as ntango nini, etc.

Another similar word is boni. It is used to ask the quantity or how many there is of something, and can also be used to ask how a person is. For example:

boni bino?	how are you (plural)	how/quantity you (plural)?
bato boni?	how many people	people quantity?