V. VOCABULARY: MISCELLANEOUS WORDS.

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 !

Preliminary note.

The Kikongo uses all the letters of the Roman alphabet, except the letters “q”, “r” and “x” which are unusual, even if the letter “r” may appear in some “Lari” words.

In Kikongo the “u” is pronounced “oo”, the “s” is pronounced “ss” regardless of its position in the word and the “g” is pronounced “gg” when preceded by the letter “n” and “ghe” if this is not the case and this only when the following letter is the vowel “a”, “e” or “o”, if the following letter is the vowel “i” or “u”, the “g” is pronounced “gg”.

The letters “y” and “w” which are used as vowels in Kikongo can also become consonants when they are at the beginning of the word or when they are preceded by the letters “n” and “m” respectively.

The words presented in the list below may have different spellings depending on the Kikongo dialect used by the speaker. This is how we can have the vowel “u” instead of “o”, the vowel “i” instead of “e”, the consonant “g” instead of “v” or anything else. In the Lari for example, the syllable “ki” at the beginning of a word can be replaced by “tshi” as in “tshitoko”/”kitoko” (beauty) or in “ntshila”/”nkila” (tail). Listening to our Bazombo brothers, I found out that for them the “b” of “bantu” is transformed into “h” or “w” to hear “hantu”/”wantu”, “hana”/”wana” or “heto”/”weto” which also says “yeto”, so you have only to know it and to take it into account in the search for words, in any case this makes the richness of our language and does not prevent us from understanding each other very well and being able to dialogue.

Derived words.

To the list of words we give in this lexicon, we should add those that we have deliberately omitted because they are words derived from verbs when they are very rarely used, they are simple language constructions that can intervene in a conversation to indicate either the actor of the verb or the way in which the verb is accomplished. These words can be easily reconstructed by following the method presented below.

To indicate the actor of the verb, the derived word is obtained by replacing the letter “a” ending of the verb with the letter “i” unless the verb ends with the syllable “la”, in which case the letter is transformed into “di”, then by replacing the prefix “ku” of the verb with :

– the letter “n” if the consonant following “ku” is d, g, k, l, n, s, t, y or z,

example 1: “kulunda” which turns into “nlundi” which translates into “conservative”.

example 2: “kutula” which is transformed into “ntudi” which is translated as “layer”.

– the letter “m” if the consonant following “ku” is b, f, m, p, v, or w,

example 1: “kubonga” which is conjugated “mbongi” which is translated as “taker”.

example 2: “kufuta” which conjugates “mfuti” which translates as “payer”.

– the prefix “mu” as an alternative to the two previous cases in some Kikongo dialects, in which case the four examples above become respectively “mulundi”, “mutudi”, “mubongi” and “mufuti”.

To indicate the action of the verb or the way in which the verb is performed, the beginning of the derived word is obtained by following the same rule as described above to indicate the actor of the verb unless the consonant following the prefix “ku” of the verb is “l”, “n” or “m”, in which case “nl” and “n’ n” are replaced by “nd” while “m’m” is replaced by “mb”. As for the end of the word, the letter “a” ending of the verb is replaced by :

– the “ilu” termination (which can be transformed into “ulu”) in most cases,

example 1: “kulunda” which is transformed into “ndundilu” (conservation or way of conserving).

example 2: “kutula” which is transformed into “ntudilu” (way of posing).

– the ending “olo” in the particular case of verbs whose penultimate syllable contains the vowel “e” or “o”,

example 1: “kubonga” which is transformed into “mbongolo” (way of taking).

example 2: “kutenda” which is transformed into “ntendolo” (way of tearing).

By replacing the prefix “ku” of the infinitive of some verbs with “lu” and the letter “a” at the end of these verbs with the letter “u“, we obtain other derived words as in the following examples :

– example 1 :  “kuvuna” which is transformed into “ luvunu” (lie).

– example 2 :  “kununga” which is transformed into “lunungu” (victory).

The first variant of this group of derived words beginning with “lu” concerns verbs ending with “ila” in which the ending “ila” is replaced by “ulu” to become a derived word as in the following examples :

– example 1 :  “ kusambila” which is transformed into “lusambulu” (prayer, way of praying).

– example 2 :  “kukuikila” which is transformed into “lukuikulu” (belief, way of believing).

The second variant of this group of derived words beginning with “lu” concerns verbs ending with “isa” in which the ending “isa” is replaced by “usu” to become a derived word as in the following examples :

– exemple 1 :  “kufundisa” which is transformed into “lufundusu” (judgment).

– exemple 2 :  “kufunisa” which is transformed into “lufunusu” (multiplication).

When the word derived from the verb is entered in the common language, then this word normally appears in the list,

example 1: “kulonga” which is transformed into “nlongi” (teacher)

example 2: “kuvuluza” which is transformed into “mvuluzi” (liberator)

There are other words derived from verbs to indicate the result obtained by the action of the verb, most of them have become full-fledged words used in everyday language, in which case they are present in this list.

example 1: “kulonga” which is transformed into “di/malongi” (teaching)

example 2: “kufuta” which is transformed into “difuta” (pay)

Many words beginning with the prefix “ki” do not appear in this list although they are considered as words of the common language, they are words derived from other words already present in this list or from verbs and that we have deliberately omitted to avoid duplicating and overloading the file. These words can be easily reconstructed by placing the prefix “ki” at the head of the word whose quality, function, habit or state is to be indicated.

Example 1: The word “soda” (soldier) will give the word “kisoda” (soldier quality or function).

Example 2: The verb “kuyiba” gives the word “muyibi” (thief) which will give the word “kimuyibi” (quality or habit of thief).

Note: The “/” sign in the word definition separates two definitions of the same word depending on how it is pronounced.

Miscellaneous words.

In this section, the miscellaneous s words are divided into 10 parts accessible through the sub-menu associated with this page and which appears when you point to the title of the current page in the main menu of the Kikongo space. You can then access the list of various words in this section through the following 10 subsections :

1) Miscellaneous words, part 1/10 (a-di)

2) Miscellaneous words, part 2/10 (do-kik)

3) Miscellaneous words, part 3/10 (kil-kis)

4) Miscellaneous words, part 4/10 (kit-luf)

5) Miscellaneous words, part 5/10 (lug-ma)

6) Miscellaneous words, part 6/10 (mb-mpi)

7) Miscellaneous words, part 7/10 (mpo-ne)

8) Miscellaneous words, part 8/10 (ng-nk)

9) Miscellaneous words, part 9/10 (nl-nze)

10) Miscellaneous words, part 10/10 (nzi-z)