Symbols
94Click a symbol to copy it and open its page.
Lingala alphabet
One row per letter in Lingala alphabetical order, with Ɛ after E and Ɔ after O. The accent columns are the tone marks: acute for a high tone, circumflex for a falling tone, caron for a rising tone. Low tone is the plain letter.
Tone marks for ɛ and ɔ
Unicode has no ready-made ɛ or ɔ with an accent. Type the letter, then paste one of these combining marks straight after it: ɛ́ ɔ́, ɛ̂ ɔ̂, ɛ̌ ɔ̌.
Quotation marks
Printed Lingala often follows French practice with « guillemets »; curly quotes and ’ are common online.
Currency
The Congolese franc is written FC after the amount and the CFA franc of Congo-Brazzaville FCFA; neither has a sign of its own. US dollars circulate widely in Kinshasa.
Where it's spoken
DR Congo, home of most speakers; Congo-Brazzaville, where Lingala is a national language; and Angola, with communities in the north and in Luanda.
Lingala music and the river
Congolese rumba, soukous and ndombolo, sung in Lingala, and the pirogues of the Congo River where the language grew up.
On the map
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The Lingala alphabet from A to Z
Lingala is written in the Latin alphabet, in the order a b c d e ɛ f g h i k l m n o ɔ p r s t u v w y z, each letter with a capital and a small form. Two distinctive letters are used: Ɛ ɛ, which comes straight after e, and Ɔ ɔ, which comes straight after o. J, q and x are not part of the native alphabet; they turn up mainly in names and borrowed words. C is rare in native Lingala words, but it is in Unicode's CLDR list of Lingala letters.
Many school charts of the Lingala alphabet also list the consonant clusters that open so many words: mb, mp, nd, ng, nk, ns, nt, nz and ny, as in mbóte (hello), ndeko (brother, sister or relative), Nzambe (God) and nyama (animal, meat). They are written with ordinary letters and need no special characters, but they explain why a Lingala dictionary looks so full under M and N.
So yes, Lingala is a written language. It has been printed for well over a century, in Bibles, hymn books, school primers, newspapers and song lyrics, and today it is written every day in text messages and on social media across the two Congos and their diaspora.
What Ɛ ɛ and Ɔ ɔ do
Formal Lingala has seven vowel phonemes, a e ɛ i o ɔ u; standard Lingala has five and lacks the ɛ/e and ɔ/o contrasts. Where the formal variety distinguishes them, ɛ is close to the vowel of English bed and plain e nearer French é, while ɔ is close to the vowel of British law and plain o nearer French eau. In formal Lingala, these contrasts distinguish words: lɛlɔ́ is today, mokɔlɔ a day, ndɛkɛ a bird, and mɔ́tɔ (fire) is a different word from moto (person).
Both letters were taken from the phonetic alphabet, where ɛ and ɔ stand for exactly these sounds, and the same letters are written in Ewe, Akan, Bambara and many other African languages. Ɛ is not the Greek epsilon ε, and Ɔ is not the reversed c Ↄ, although they look alike; copy the real letters from the grid so that words can be found by search and sort correctly.
In everyday chat many people skip the open vowels and write plain e and o (lelo, mokolo), and readers understand from context. Formal Lingala distinguishes ɛ and ɔ, but Lingala has no uniform spelling across writers and publications.
Lingala tones and the accented letters á â ǎ
Lingala is a tonal language: each syllable is spoken high or low, and the pitch can tell words apart. When tone is written, a high tone gets an acute accent (á é í ó ú) and a low tone is left unmarked. A syllable that falls from high to low carries a circumflex (â ê î ô), and one that rises from low to high carries a caron, the little v (ǎ ě ǐ ǒ). That is why the alphabet on this page has four forms of most vowels.
Ordinary writing usually leaves the tones out: mbote and mbóte are the same greeting, and a Lingala speaker reads either without trouble. Dictionaries, grammars, language courses and linguists mark them, and so do learners who want to get the pronunciation right.
The open vowels need one trick. Unicode has ready-made letters for á, ê, ǒ and the rest, but none for ɛ or ɔ with an accent, so a high-tone ɛ́ or ɔ́ is typed as the plain letter followed by a combining accent: ɛ gives ɛ́, ɔ gives ɔ̂, ɛ gives ɛ̌. The three combining marks are in the grid; paste one directly after the letter it belongs to.
How to type Lingala letters: Ɛ ɛ, Ɔ ɔ and the tone marks
On a phone, a French or English keyboard gives the acute and circumflex vowels by long-pressing a, e, i, o or u. For ɛ, ɔ and the caron vowels, add a keyboard app that supports Lingala, or copy them from the grid above.
On a Windows PC, the accented vowels from the French alphabet have Alt codes on the number pad: Alt0225 á, Alt0226 â, Alt0233 é, Alt0234 ê, Alt0237 í, Alt0238 î, Alt0243 ó, Alt0244 ô, Alt0250 ú, and Alt0193 Á, Alt0201 É for the capitals. In Microsoft Word, type a code and press AltX: 025B gives ɛ, 0190 Ɛ, 0254 ɔ, 0186 Ɔ, 01CE ǎ, 011B ě, 01D0 ǐ, 01D2 ǒ, and 0301, 0302 or 030C typed right after ɛ or ɔ adds an acute, circumflex or caron. For everyday typing in every program, install a free Lingala or pan-African keyboard layout; Keyman, for example, offers layouts for many African languages.
On a Mac, OptionE then a vowel gives the acute (á) and OptionI then a vowel the circumflex (â). The ABC Extended input source adds the caron with OptionV then the vowel (ǎ). For ɛ and ɔ, switch to Unicode Hex Input and hold Option while typing 025B or 0254.
In HTML, write ɛ for ɛ, Ɛ for Ɛ, ɔ for ɔ, Ɔ for Ɔ, ǎ for ǎ and ́ for the combining acute (so ɛ́ shows ɛ́). Most modern system fonts draw all of these, but some decorative fonts do not, and then the accent can land in the wrong place.
Where Lingala is spoken
Lingala is the language of Kinshasa and of the Congo River. Unicode's CLDR lists about 3.6 million Lingala users in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 150,000 in the Republic of the Congo. Those figures estimate a literate, functional population and may include first- and later-language users, so they are not a full speaker count: across western and northern DR Congo and in Brazzaville, Lingala is the common language of markets, buses, the army, churches and the street, and most estimates of all its speakers run into the tens of millions.
It grew in the 19th century as a trade language along the middle Congo River, built largely on Bobangi and other river languages, and spread with steamboats, soldiers, missionaries and above all music. It is one of the four national languages of DR Congo, with Kikongo, Swahili and Tshiluba, and one of the two national languages of the Republic of the Congo, with Kituba. French is the official language in both countries, which is why Lingala borrows many French words and why « » guillemets are common in printed Lingala.
Lingala is a Bantu language of the Niger–Congo family. For the other languages of the region see the Kongo, Swahili and Luba-Katanga collections, and for each country's flag, currency and emoji see DR Congo, Congo-Brazzaville, Angola and Central African Republic.
Lingala music, punctuation and the other symbols here
Lingala reached the whole of Africa through song. Congolese rumba, soukous and ndombolo are sung mostly in Lingala, so much so that in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda the music itself is often simply called "lingala". That is why the guitar , the dancers and sit in this collection; Congolese rumba was added to UNESCO's list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2021, on a joint nomination of the two Congos. The canoe stands for the river pirogues of the people the language grew up among.
For quotation marks, printed Lingala often follows French practice with « guillemets », while online and in English-language settings the curly “ ” and ’ are just as common. The Congolese franc of DR Congo uses the abbreviation FC after the amount; the Republic of the Congo uses the Central African CFA franc, written FCFA, and US dollars circulate widely in Kinshasa alongside the franc.
How to use them
6 situationsClick to copyLingala Alphabet & Letters combos
12Worth knowing
- In East Africa, "lingala" is the name of a style of music: Congolese rumba and soukous are often called lingala music in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, after the language they are sung in.
- The Lingala word lobi means both yesterday and tomorrow; the tense of the verb tells you which.
- Unicode has no ready-made ɛ or ɔ with an accent, so a tone-marked ɛ́ is always two characters: ɛ followed by the combining acute .
- The small ɛ and ɔ live in Unicode's IPA Extensions block, because phoneticians used them first; their capitals Ɛ and Ɔ sit in Latin Extended-B, because African alphabets built from phonetic letters needed capitals the phonetic alphabet never had.
Questions people ask
7What is the Lingala alphabet?
a b c d e ɛ f g h i k l m n o ɔ p r s t u v w y z, in capital and small form, with ɛ after e and ɔ after o. When tone is written, vowels also appear as á â ǎ, é ê ě and so on.
Is Lingala a written language?
Yes. It is written in the Latin alphabet with the extra letters ɛ and ɔ, and has been used in print for more than a century: Bibles, schoolbooks, newspapers, songs and today text messages and social media.
Does Lingala have tones?
Yes, high and low, which combine into falling and rising tones. When they are marked, high is á, falling â and rising ǎ; low is left plain. Everyday writing usually leaves tones out.
How do I type ɛ and ɔ on a keyboard?
In Word, type 025B, 0190, 0254 or 0186 and press AltX for ɛ, Ɛ, ɔ or Ɔ. On phones add a keyboard that supports Lingala, or copy them from this page.
How do I write ɛ or ɔ with an accent?
Type the letter, then a combining mark right after it: for a high tone (ɛ́), for falling (ɔ̂), for rising (ɛ̌). In Word that is 0301, 0302 or 030C followed by AltX.
How do you say hello in Lingala?
Mbóte (often written mbote). Mbóte na yo means hello to you, and Sango nini? asks what's new.
Where is Lingala spoken?
Mainly in DR Congo, above all in Kinshasa and along the Congo River, and in the Republic of the Congo, especially Brazzaville, with smaller communities in Angola and the Central African Republic and a large diaspora.
