World Language Map

Where is Kinshasa Lingala spoken?

Kinshasa Lingala (Lingála) is an Atlantic-Congo language, spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, the Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic. It is marked on the map by a ringed point.

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Key

Language families (largest ten)

  • Atlantic-Congo
  • Austronesian
  • Sino-Tibetan
  • Indo-European
  • Afro-Asiatic
  • Nuclear Trans New Guinea
  • Otomanguean
  • Austroasiatic
  • Tai-Kadai
  • Pama-Nyungan

Everything else

  • All other families Smaller families, isolates and unclassified languages.
  • Point A language with no area map. The dot sits at its Glottolog position, in its family colour.

How to read the map. Each colour is a language family: a group of languages that share a common ancestor. The ten largest families have their own colour and every other family is grey. Areas are see-through, so where two languages share a place the colours mix. Tap anywhere to list every language whose area covers that spot. Areas are generalisations drawn from published atlases, many of them decades old, and cities are multilingual, so an area never says that everyone there speaks the language. A dot marks a language that has no area map. The family name is always given in words, because colour alone is hard to tell apart for some people.

Where Kinshasa Lingala is spoken

Kinshasa Lingala is spoken in 4 countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, the Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.

CountryShare of populationEstimated speakers
Democratic Republic of the Congo3.1%3,577,493
Angola0.7%249,254
Republic of the Congo2.4%146,344
Central African Republic0.2%13,562

Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.

Kinshasa Lingala has no area on the map because no open area map covers it. The ringed point is the position Glottolog gives for the language.

How many people speak Kinshasa Lingala?

Wikidata gives about 20 million speakers (A Grammatical Overview of Lingala, 2020). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.

Where Kinshasa Lingala sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Kinshasa Lingala as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.

  1. Atlantic-Congo
  2. Volta-Congo
  3. Benue-Congo
  4. Bantoid
  5. Southern Bantoid
  6. Narrow Bantu
  7. Central-Western Bantu
  8. North Zaire River
  9. Rivers Bantu
  10. Ngiri
  11. Ngiri Riverain Ubangi
  12. Ngiri Riverain Ubangi-Ripuaire
  13. Bobangic
  14. Bobangic Riverain
  15. Bobangi-Bangala-Lingala
  16. Lingala-Bangala
  17. Kinshasa Lingala

Related languages

Other languages in the Lingala-Bangala group:

More about Kinshasa Lingala

Codes: ISO 639-3 lin, Glottolog ling1263. Glottolog macroarea: Africa.

Questions about Kinshasa Lingala

Where is Kinshasa Lingala spoken?

Kinshasa Lingala is spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, the Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic. Unicode CLDR puts it at 3.1% of the population of Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is about 3,577,493 people. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Kinshasa Lingala?

Wikidata gives about 20 million speakers (A Grammatical Overview of Lingala, 2020). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled.

Which language family is Kinshasa Lingala in?

Glottolog places Kinshasa Lingala in the Atlantic-Congo family, in the branch Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, Bantoid, Southern Bantoid, Narrow Bantu, Central-Western Bantu, North Zaire River, Rivers Bantu, Ngiri, Ngiri Riverain Ubangi, Ngiri Riverain Ubangi-Ripuaire, Bobangic, Bobangic Riverain, Bobangi-Bangala-Lingala and Lingala-Bangala.

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