The Bangi language, or ''Bobangi'', is a relative and main lexical source of

Lingala Lingala (Ngala) (Lingala: ''Lingála'') is a Bantu language spoken in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the northern half of the Republic of the Congo, in their capitals, Kinshasa and Brazzaville, and to a lesser degree in ...

spoken in central

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

. Dialects of the language are spoken on both sides of the

Ubangi River The Ubangi River (), also spelled Oubangui, is the largest right-bank tributary of the Congo River in the region of Central Africa. It begins at the confluence of the Mbomou (mean annual discharge 1,350 m3/s) and Uele Rivers (mean annual discharge ...

and

Congo River The Congo River ( kg, Nzâdi Kôngo, french: Fleuve Congo, pt, Rio Congo), formerly also known as the Zaire River, is the second longest river in Africa, shorter only than the Nile, as well as the second largest river in the world by discharge ...

Use in trade

As the Bobangi people came to dominate the slave trade along the upper

in the late 18th century, the Bangi language was used to facilitate trade between different ethnic groups in the region. Linguist John Whitehead claimed that the Moye, Likuba, Bonga, Mpama, Lusakani, and peoples all used Bangi for intercommunication in the 1890s. Traders in the region who did not speak Bangi used a trade language that borrowed heavily from Bangi. At the height of indigenous trade along the upper river, the Bobangi dominated the 500 kilometer section of the Congo between the

Kwah River The Kasai River ( ; called Cassai in Angola) is a tributary (left side) of the Congo River, located in Central Africa. The river begins in central Angola and flows to the east until it reaches the border between Angola and the Democratic Republi ...

and the equator, which most river trade passed through. Other ethnic groups in this area were either assimilated into the Bobangi ethnic alliance, adopting the Bangi language, or were driven off. However, the Bobangi dominance over trade was ended by Europeans in the late 19th century when colonial powers pushed local indigenous groups out of profitable trade. By the late twentieth century, there were very few Bobangi people remaining in the area they had controlled a century earlier, and the Bangi language is no longer widespread.

Sources and references

Linguistic map

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bangi Language Bangi-Ntomba languages Languages of the Democratic Republic of the Congo