Tshiluba 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 Atlantic-Congo Volta-Congo Benue-Congo Bantoid Southern Narrow Bantu Central L Luba Tshiluba
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	`lu`
ISO 639-2:	`lua`
ISO 639-3:	`lua`
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key.

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.

1 Classification
2 Geographic distribution
- 2.1 Dialects
3 Vocabulary
4 Sources
5 External links

[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.