Language/Lingala/Grammar/Create-your-first-simple-sentences-in-the-affirmative

Create your first simple sentences in the affirmative – Learn the Lingala Language

By now you should be starting to see and feel a rhythm to basic conjugation patterns. As you continue to practice, and to add more verbs and vocabulary as we’ll do later in this section, you’ll become increasingly comfortable with creating the simple sentences necessary to start speaking Lingala in more and more situations.

Using the verb structures of the 10 starter verbs outlined above, we’ll now combine them with the 10 starter words from the first section.

Again, by way of review, here are the 10 starter verbs:

Take a moment to explore these relevant pages as you conclude this lesson: Present Tense, Verb to be, Object Pronouns & The First 10 Verbs.

10 starter verbs

• kozala – to be

• kozala na – to have

• kolinga – to want, to like

• kosala – to work, to make

• kosomba – to buy

• kokanisa – to think, to hope

• koloba – to speak

• koyeba – to know

• kokoka – to be able to

• kosengela – to have to

10 starter words

And here are the 10 starter words:

• mwasi – wife/woman

• mobali – husband/man

• ndeko – brother/sister

• ndako – house

• mosala – work

• mbuma – fruit

• ndunda – vegetables

• mayi – water

• malamu – good

• mabe – bad

Subject pronouns

And, because you’ll need to use the subject and personal pronouns and prepositions to tie everything together, here they are again:

The subject pronouns:

• na – (nah) – I

• o – (oh) – you

• a – (ah) – he/she

• to – (toh) – we

• bo – (boh) – you (plural)

• ba – (bah) – they

• e – (eh) – it

Personal pronouns

The personal pronouns:

• ngai – me, mine

• yo – you, yours

• ye – him/her, his/hers

• biso – we, ours

• bino – you, yours (plural)

• bango – them, their

Prepositions

And the prepositions:

• na – and, on, in, of

• ya – of

Helper words

And, finally, the helper words:

• boye – (BOY-eh) – so, thus

• ebele – (eh-BEL-eh) – many, a lot

• eh – (eh) – yes

• kasi – (KAH-see) – but

• moke – (moh-KAY) – few, little

• pe – (peh) – and

• po na nini – (poh nah NEE-nee) – why

• soki – (SOH-kee) – if

• tango mosusu – (TANG-goh moh-SOO-soo) – maybe

• te – (teh) – no

• to – (toh) – or

• po – (poh) – because

Put things together

Let’s start putting things together. To say ‘I speak Lingala’, you’ll need ‘I speak’ from the correctly conjugated form of the verb koloba – which is nalobi. And, of course, the word ‘Lingala’.

In this case, the sentence structure is very straightforward and the same as the English construction:

• Nalobi Lingala. – I speak Lingala.

To say ‘I spoke Lingala’, simply change the present form of koloba for the past tense:

• Nalobaki Lingala. – I spoke Lingala.

To say ‘I will speak Lingala,’ switch from the past to the future tense:

• Nakoloba Lingala. – I will speak Lingala.

And, for the imperative:

• Loba Lingala! – Speak Lingala!

Let’s try another. To say ‘I buy vegetables’, you’ll need ‘I buy’ from the conjugated form of the verb kosomba, in this case nasombi. And the word for vegetables, which is ndunda.

Again, the sentence structure is very straightforward and the same as the English construction:

• Nasombi ndunda. – I buy vegetables.

To say, ‘I bought vegetables’, you simply change the present for the past tense of kosomba:

• Nasombaki ndunda. – I bought vegetables.

And similarly, to say that you are going to buy vegetables, switch the past for the future tense:

• Nakosomba ndunda. – I will buy vegetables.

If you want to be really pushy about, you can use the imperative to demand that someone buy vegetables:

• Somba ndunda! – Buy vegetables!

Now let’s try one that’s a bit more complex.

To say ‘My work is good’, you’ll need ngai – ‘my’, mosala – ‘work’, and the correct form of ‘kozala’ – ‘to be’ – which in this case is ezali since the sentence is referring to an ‘it’, which will need to use the ‘e-’ subject pronoun. You’ll also need a preposition to link it all together. In this case, the everpopular ‘na’.

Together this creates:

• Mosala na ngai ezali malamu. – My work is good.

As you can see in this example, the sentence construction in Lingala is slightly different than it would be in English. The structure is somewhat inverted; it literally reads ‘Work of mine is good’. However, this is a typical Lingala sentence, and with a bit of practice and patience, you’ll quickly get used to it.

Following on from this example, if you wanted to say ‘Your work is good’, simply change the ‘ngai’ for ‘yo’, the personal pronoun for ‘you’ or ‘yours’:

• Mosala na yo ezali malamu. – Your work is good.

Similarly, if you wanted to say ‘Her work is good,’ again change the personal pronoun, this time from ‘yo’ to ‘ye’, for ‘her’.

• Mosala na ye ezali malamu. – Her work is good.

Now that you have the pattern, here are a few more examples to help illustrate how it all works:

• Nazali na mwasi. – I have a wife.
• Osombaki ndunda mabe. – You bought bad vegetables.
• Tolingi mbuma. – We like fruit.
• Akosala na ndako na biso. – He is going to work at our house.
• Balobi Lingala malamu. – They speak Lingala well.
• Ozali malamu. – You are good.

Source

https://lobalingala.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/23042014-loba-lingala.pdf

Other Lessons

• Gender
• Verb to be
• The Imperative Mood
• Personal pronouns
• Conditional Mood
• Subject pronouns
• Conjugation To Have
• Past progressive tense
• Nouns
• Irregular verbs – koya – to come
• Irregular verbs – kokende – to go
• The subjunctive
• The Past Tense To Be
• POSSESSIVES
• Prepositions