Kongo
Sign in to saveBantu language spoken in Angola, Congo Brazzaville and Congo Kinshasa
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Kongo is a Bantu language spoken by people in Angola and the two Congo countries (Congo Brazzaville and Congo Kinshasa) in Central Africa. It matters as a significant African language that represents the linguistic and cultural heritage of millions of people in this region.
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Kongo or Kikongo is one of the Bantu languages spoken by the Kongo people living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the Republic of the Congo, Gabon, and Angola. It is a tonal language. The vast majority of present-day speakers live in Africa. There are roughly seven million native speakers of Kongo in the above-named countries. An estimated five million more speakers use it as a second language.
Historically, it was spoken by many of those Africans who for centuries were taken captive, transported across the Atlantic, and sold as slaves in the Americas. For this reason, creolized forms of the language are found in ritual speech of Afro-American religions, especially in Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Suriname. It is also one of the sources of the Gullah language, which formed in the Low Country and Sea Islands of the United States Southeast, and a major source of the Palenquero language of Colombia.