Kituba

Kituba is a widely used lingua franca in Central Africa. It is a creole language based on Kikongo, a family of closely related Bantu languages. It is an official language in Republic of the Congo and Democratic Republic of the Congo.

It is not entirely accurate to call Kituba a creole language as it lacks the distinction between superstrate and substrate influence that is typical of creole development.

Kituba is known by many names among its speakers. In the Republic of Congo it is called Munukutuba or Kituba. The former is a grammatically incorrect phrase which means literally "I to speak". The latter means simply "speech". The name Kituba is used in the constitution of the Republic of Congo.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo it is called Kikongo ya leta (i.e. Kikongo of the state administration), but it is often called in short Kikongo, especially out of the region of ethnic Bakongo people. The constitution of the Democratic Republic of Congo lists Kikongo as one of the national languages. In fact, it refers to Kikongo ya leta (i.e. Kituba), because a translation of the constitution itself is written in Kituba but no translation exists in Kikongo.

There are also other historical names such as Kibulamatadi, Kikwango, Ikeleve (literally: He is not here), and Kizabave but they have largely fallen out of use. In the academic circles the language is called Kikongo-Kituba.

The majority of Kituba speakers live in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is spoken as the primary lingua franca in the provinces of Bas-Congo, Kwango and Kwilu and to a lesser extent in Kinshasa, Mai-Ndombe and Kasai-Occidental.