1 CLASSIFICATION
AND WHERE SPOKEN
The term "Kongo" encompasses a group of Bantu dialects, Guthrie's general heading
(H10) as well as the subbranch (H16). It is spoken in Angola, Congo, Gabon,
and Zaire.
2 NUMBER OF SPEAKERS
UBS (1982) notes 3 million speakers in Congo alone. The 1960 Angola census notes 621,787 Kongo speakers. Voegelin and Voegelin (1977) list 1,500,000. Alexandre (1981) tentatively suggests a minimum of 2.5 million. UBS (1991; cited in Grimes 1996) estimates 3,217,000 speakers.
3 DIALECT SURVEY
Heine (1970) reports that the major dialect distinction is between west and east and the influence of the first languages spoken in each area. Voegelin and Voegelin (1977) report nine dialects of Kikongo, while Lay (personal communication, 1983) reports twelve, with eight in Zaire, two in the Congo, and two in Angola.
4
USAGE
Kongo is a literary language and a language vehicular (known as Kituba) used
throughout this area of Africa. Kongo is used as a lingua franca in Zaire and
in metropolitan Brazzaville. UNESCO/UNDP has prepared materials for a literacy
campaign in Angola. Kikongo is heard on La Voix de la Révolution (Congo) and
La Voix du Zaïre.
5
ORTHOGRAPHIC STATUS
There is a standard literary orthography, but tones are generally
not marked.
6
SETS OF LEARNING MATERIALS
Because of Kikongo's mutual intelligibility and the existence
of a standard orthography, only one set of materials would be necessary.
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