LINGALAVISION

Lingala alphabet

Lingala  or Lingála is a Bantu language mostly spoken in Central Africa. Although, there are different alphabets that can be used, Mandombe script is one of them, Lingala is mainly written using the Latin alphabet. The alphabet is divided into:

• 15 Simple Consonant
• 17 Double consonants or digraphs
• 3 Triple consonants or trigraphs
• 5 simple vowels
• 2 special vowels

A digraph is two letters combined to make a single sound in written or spoken English. A digraph can consist of consonants and vowels. In the same way, A trigraph is three letters combined. The combined consonants Gb is often time replaced with Gw. As an example, gbagba and gwagwa mean “bridge”.

The letters c, h, j, q, r, and x are rare but present in borrowed words from other languages. In the old spoken Lingala, r was usually replaced by the letter l.

Lingala is a tonal language with has four tones represented by accented letters. There is not such a “Lingala alphabet” but the specificities of the language make the writing quite unique.

If you want to know more about Lingala writing, have a look at our resources page