Welcome to the Kikongo Space of your favourite website.

“Any people cut off from his language, ancestors, past and religion or culture are like an uprooted tree. Sooner or later, this people will fade and sink into the cultural void that favors all dominations“.

Note :

At the insistent request of some English-speaking visitors, I was forced to translate this lexicon from French to English.  It’s a colossal job that took me a lot of time, I applied myself and tried to do my best. Despite this, since English is not my usual language, there could be some translation errors here and there. If you find any, do not hesitate to report them to me by writing to me through the contact page of this website.

Thank you in advance !

The National Anthem of KONGO DIA NTOTELA.

Kikongo is the language that Lord Akongo left to Kongo People in order to communicate with him through the Kongo Great Spirits and to be used as communication language between all the members of that people living in the whole space of Kongo dia Ntotela which extends from  the North-West of Angola to the South of Gabon while passing by the Central Kongo as well as a part of Bandundu in D.R. Congo and by the South of Congo Brazza, the Kikongo language is thus the main vehicle of the Kongo culture. For it is illusory to claim to be Mukongo if one does not master one’s language and if one is not spiritually linked to Lord Akongo, that is to say to Mfumu Nzambi’a Mpungu Tulendo knowing that this relationship does not tolerate any impurity constituted by the intrusion of a foreign religion, that is why we must all, as Kongo Children, have as an objective to strive towards this requirement.

The Kikongo language in question here is not the artificial language called “Mono kutuba”, in other words “I speak”, which was created by the colonizer for the purposes of his administration, but it is the Kikongo language as it is spoken in all villages in the Kongo area and whose few small differences from one point to another do not concern the words themselves but are only in the way they are pronounced, which can lead to some small differences in their spelling on one or two letters (example : verb to speak which is pronounced kuvova or kugoga depending on where you are). It may even be that a few words may differ from one place to another, but they remain understood by others and do not prevent communication.

This is an opportunity for me to pay tribute here to our Nlongi Ne Muanda Nsemi, who, through his teachings, made me aware of the importance of our language for the sustainability of our Kongo people, a language that, since independence and since the other brotherly peoples of Congo began to invade Kinshasa and the cities of Central Kongo, we tended to neglect in favour of the Lingala language to the point of making us believe that speaking our Kikongo language was degrading. He made us aware that in the DRC, our language was declining and that if we were not careful, it could be taken to disappear and our Kongo identity with it. Fortunately, there are the Bakongo of Congo Brazzaville who have an environment similar to ours, but who have managed to keep the pride of speaking their language to such an extent that in Brazzaville the Bakongo speak their language without complexes unlike their counterparts opposite. As for our brothers in Angola, it would seem that we must distinguish between two categories, on the one hand the indigenous people who have not moved from their country and who have managed to preserve the use of their language and on the other hand those who have lived in the DRC and who are as corrupt as their counterparts in Central Kongo by the invasive Lingala language.

Given my lack of mastery of the Kikongo language due to insufficient and faraway practice, the creation of this lexicon should probably require more difficult and time-consuming work than Lingala. My methodology is to start from the Lingala lexicon I created to build step by step the Kikongo lexicon, but I realize that my knowledge of Kikongo is very limited and even if I amaze myself at how easily words come to my mind, I can only translate one word or one expression out of two. To do this work, I use the Internet to find content that uses the Kikongo language to extract new words, mainly the writings of Mfumu Muanda Nsemi. It is possible that errors have crept in here and there, so I count on the contribution of all those who master this language to report them to me so that I can correct them, use for this the contact page of this site.

The restoration of Kongo dia Ntotela’s sovereignty requires the rehabilitation of our language, culture and spirituality. May all Kongo children benefit from this work to find or consolidate their roots. In the meantime, one message to all: “Bana ba Kongo, lutunga nzola, mika mia mia mbua sikamana va kimosi, lekila va kimosi”.

Your servant,

KUETE NZA-YAZOLA’MO.                                                           Published on August 4, 2018