A collection of my musings - comments and discussion encouraged!

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Henkkles
Green Belt
Posts: 277
Joined: Thu Apr 07, 2016 2:13 pm
Languages: N FI | A EN SV | I EE RU | B FR LN
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Re: A collection of my musings - comments and discussion encouraged!

Postby Henkkles » Tue Mar 21, 2023 8:56 am

It's fascinating how French orthographical conventions bleed into Lingala. For example, French has lots of morphemes that are by all intents and purposes bound morphemes, such as the indefinite and definite plural markers "des" and "les". In the Congolese understanding, the common plural marker ba- (originally from Bantu class 2) which is used with loanwords and a large part of the word stock (and definitely a bound morpheme) is contrary to ALL other Bantu orthographies spelled separately. The Congolese equate "ba" with "des" or "les" depending on context. French words can be code-switched in at will, and to mark plurality, you can just prepend "ba", as in "ba voitures".
Similarly, to French, Lingala also has bound and unbound personal morphemes. The French bound 1sg morpheme "je" and the unbound "moi" are equated to the Bantu-inherited 1sg prefix "na-" and the unbound "ngai". These are as well understood from a French orthographical convention. Lingala is the only Bantu language (that I know of) where native speakers routinely spell the personal prefix as a "separate word", as in French. Funnily enough, colloquial French spelling is beginning to reflect the bounded nature of person-marking, as in "jparle", "chuis", etc.

Bonus fact: "to haggle" in Lingala is "kokakola", which I found funny. Morphemically it is ko-(infinitive) kak-(verbal root) ol-(reversive) a-(final vowel)
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User avatar
Henkkles
Green Belt
Posts: 277
Joined: Thu Apr 07, 2016 2:13 pm
Languages: N FI | A EN SV | I EE RU | B FR LN
x 796

Re: A collection of my musings - comments and discussion encouraged!

Postby Henkkles » Tue Mar 28, 2023 4:40 pm

Feels a bit weird to be studying Lingala from FSI knowing that the course was made in 1963 knowing what happened to Patrice Lumumba at CIA's behest... who were trained with this course and to what end. The American foreign establishment also supported Mobutu the monster for the sole reason that he wasn't a communist. Interestingly, the course is also somewhat out of date. Because creoles develop quite fast, 60 years has eroded some features mentioned in the course. Comparing it to Meeuwis 2020, inanimate plural congruence has completely died off. It's not so difficult so I did the grammatical drills in the unit anyway.

Code-switching with French is rampant and it's almost more idiomatic to do so it's not such a hassle if you can't remember a word in Lingala (provided you know it in French). Lingala has also developed a sentence initial modal particle "ifô" from French "il faut", which is definitely shorter than the native "esengélí" and fits quite well in the language as well.
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