Bala (''Lobala'') is a

Bantu language The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu people of Central, Southern, Eastern africa and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages. The t ...

of the

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

. According to Maho (2009), it includes Boko (''Iboko'').

Distribution and status

Bala is spoken in the northwest corner of the Democratic Republic of the Congo west of the

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 ...

by about 60,000 people. Most of these are not monolingual, but the language is being passed on to the next generation, especially in more remote areas. ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...

'' classifies the language as "vigorous", meaning that it is sustainable.Lobala at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) There are four dialects of Bala: Likoka, Poko (''Iboko''), South Lobala, and Tanda.

Negation

Like many languages in the Benue-Congo group, Bala forms negatives by adding an affix to the

verb A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...

al phrase. However, Bala is unusual in that it adds two affixes to form negatives. These are added as a prefix and a suffix to the

subject Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to: Philosophy *''Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing **Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective cons ...

affix. For example, :''ba-tub-aka'' ::They sang :''te-ba-ik-aka tuba'' ::They did not sing Here the ''te'' and the ''ik'' elements are the double affixes indicating negation, attached to the ''ba'' affix indicating third party plural. The ''tub'' element is the verb "to sing" and the ''aka'' affix indicates the

past tense The past tense is a grammatical tense whose function is to place an action or situation in the past. Examples of verbs in the past tense include the English verbs ''sang'', ''went'' and ''washed''. Most languages have a past tense, with some hav ...

. :''moto me t-a-iká mo-phé ná baphalnágà ná ntóma'' ::The man didn't give him money or food In a similar way the ''t'' and ''iká'' negation elements are affixed to the verbal affix element ''a'' (indicating third person singular).Lindsay J. Whaley, ''Introduction to Typology: The Unity and Diversity of Language'', p. 4, SAGE Publications, 1996 .

References

Ngondi-Ngiri languages Languages of the Democratic Republic of the Congo {{DRCongo-stub