User talk:Kikongo original

THE BAKONGO RESEARCH INSTITUT(BRI)

Kongo(kiKóongo) is a blanket term for a large number of related, though often quite divergent, dialects spoken principally in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo, and the republic of Angola.

The “domaine linguistique du Sud” described by Karl E.Laman in the Dictionnaire kikongo- Français. of 1936.

Historically, Kongo played a considerable part in the development of the transatlantic creole languages, from United States Gullah(as noted by Lorenzo Dow Turner in Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect, first published 1949), through the Caribbean, to South America. Kongo influence is found even in “non-Black” American English: “goober (pea)” is from Kongo ngubá “peanut/s”.

Language has a special place in Kongo culture; they are rightly proud of their own, and we can do no better than quote from William Bentley 1887:xxiii, in the Preface to his dictionary:

"At every point and turn… the richness, flexibility, exactness, subtlety of idea and nicety of expression of the language revealed themselves... We find then the Kongos speaking a language so exact and truthful that the tricks, the double intention, the falsities and illogical perversions which are so freely perpetrated in European languages, would not be possible in Kongo argument. Half the quibbles and mountains of reasoning, thrown up upon strained usage of words and indefinite expressions could trouble no Kongos, with so exact and definite a speech at their command ...an elaborate and regular grammatical system of speech of such subtlety and exactness of idea that its daily use is in itself an education."