Luba language
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| Tshiluba | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in | Democratic Republic of the Congo | |
| Region | Kasai-Occidental and Kasai-Oriental provinces | |
| Total speakers | 6,300,000 (1991) | |
| Language family | Niger-Congo | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1 | None | |
| ISO 639-2 | lua | |
| ISO 639-3 | lua | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Tshiluba (also called Luba-Kasai and Luba-Lulua) is a Bantu language spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where it is a national language.
Contents |
[edit] Classification
Tshiluba belongs to the Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo languages. It is the language of the Baluba people.
[edit] Geographic distribution
Tshiluba is spoken by about 6.3 million people in the Kasaï Occidental and Kasaï Oriental provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
[edit] Dialects
There are significant dialect differences between the East Kasai Region (Luba people) and the West Kasai Region (Bena Lulua people).
[edit] Vocabulary
The Bantu word identified in June 2004 by Today's Translations, a British translation company, as the most untranslatable in the world: ilunga, in the Tshiluba tongue, means "a person ready to forgive any abuse the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time". However, it is more likely to be a personal name rather than a difficult word.
[edit] Sources
- MacIntyre, Ben. Why do Koreans say 'a biscuit would be nice' instead of 'I want a biscuit'?, The Times, August 21, 2004.
[edit] External links
- Online Cilubà - French Dictionary
- Ethnologue report on Tshiluba
- BBC News: Congo word "most untranslatable"
- PanAfrican L10n page on Luba
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