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Phonology

Consonants

• /d͡z/ can be heard as alveolar or dental [d̪͡z̪] and /t͡s/ can be alveolar or postalveolar [t͡ʃ], when before front vowels.²

Vowels

Oral literature

In 1921, Edward Algernon Ruskin, a Christian missionary at Bongandanga from 1891 until 1935 in what was then the Belgian Congo,³ published Mongo Proverbs and Fables, with the Mongo text and an English translation.⁴ As Ruskin explains in the foreword to the book, his goal was to train missionaries in the Mongo language. The book contains 405 Mongo proverbs. Here are some examples:

• "Ntambaka jit'a nkusa." ("You do not go hunting porcupines and collecting bark for making string at the same time.") (#88)
• "Nkema ntawaka ndesanya." ("A monkey is not killed by merely watching it.") (#172)
• "Ise aomaki njoku, beke bempate nko?" ("Your father killed an elephant, then where are your tusks?") (#219)
• "Tusake wese; wunyu botaka 'akata." ("Do not throw away a bone; a piece of lean meat has not yet fallen into your hands.") (#389)

There are also 21 Mongo fables in the book, including a story about Ulu, the trickster Tortoise.⁵

In an earlier booklet, Proverbs, Fables, Similes and Sayings of the Bamongo, published in 1897, Ruskin provides a word by word analysis of some Mongo proverbs, often accompanied by a brief fable.⁶

In 1909, Frederick Starr published a collection of 150 Nkundo (Mongo) proverbs with English translations, "Proverbs of Upper Congo,"⁷ which he selected from a 1904 publication, Bekolo bi' ampaka ba Nkundo. Bikolongo la nsako. Beki Bakola otakanyaka (Stories of the Elders of Nkundo: Adages and Proverbs Gathered by Bakola) by Bakola, also known as Ellsworth Farris, and Royal J. Dye, missionaries based near Coquilhatville (now Mbandaka).⁸ Here are some of those proverbs:

• "Bobimbo nko lobya, nk'ome w'etuka." "The bobimbo bears no great flowers, but what large fruit it has (i.e. show is not always a sign of substance)." (#24)
• "Bocik'a nsoso: ng'omanga ntokumba, ifoyala lobi enkolonkoko." "Spare the chicken: if the wild-cat does not take it, it will become large (i.e. do not despise small things)." (#26)
• "Boseka nkoi, lokola nkingo." "The friendship of the leopard, a claw in your neck (i.e. like nursing a serpent)." (#64)
• "Bosai'omonkolo bondotaji mpota, beuma beyokoka l'alongo." "One finger gashed, all the fingers are covered with blood (i.e. if one suffers, all are involved)." (#66)

Starr is also the author of A Bibliography of Congo Languages.⁹ For more recent bibliography, see A. J. de Rop's La littérature orale mongo, published in 1974.¹⁰ For a comprehensive study of Mongo proverbs, see Hulstaert's Proverbes mongo, published in 1958, which contains over 2500 Mongo proverbs with accompanying French translations.¹¹

External links

• Mongo, Nkundo on PanAfril10n

References

1. Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online https://web.archive.org/web/20180203191542/http://goto.glocalnet.net/mahopapers/nuglonline.pdf ↩

2. de Rop, Albert J. (1958). Grammaire du lomongo: phonologie et morphologie. Leuven & Léopoldville: Université Lovanium. ↩

3. Elders at Bongandango, Congo, ca. 1920-1930 Calisphere. Retrieved July 7, 2024. https://calisphere.org/item/1a71cc65018a739956f2df102163d215/ ↩

4. Ruskin, Edward Algernon (1921). Mongo Proverbs and Fables (available online at the Internet Archive). https://archive.org/details/mongoproverbsfab00ruskrich ↩

5. "Ngila L'Ulu" in Ruskin, Edward Algernon (1921). Mongo Proverbs and Fables. pp. 82-86. https://archive.org/details/mongoproverbsfab00ruskrich/page/82/mode/2up?view=theater ↩

6. Ruskin, Edward Algernon (1897). Proverbs, Fables, Similes and Sayings of the Bamongo (available online at the Internet Archive). https://archive.org/details/proverbsfabless00ruskgoog ↩

7. Starr, Frederick (1909). "Proverbs of Upper Congo." Proceedings of the Davenport Academy of Sciences. 12: 176-196. https://archive.org/details/pub-domain-african-proverbs/page/n779/mode/2up ↩

8. Farris, Ellsworth; Dye, Royal J. (1904). Bekolo bi' ampaka ba Nkundo. Bikolongo la nsako. Beki Bakola otakanyaka. Page images at Hathi Trust; U.S. access only. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hnjlk7&seq=5 ↩

9. Starr, Frederick (1908). A Bibliography of Congo Languages.. https://archive.org/details/abibliographyco00librgoog ↩

10. de Rop, A. J. (1974). La littérature orale mongo, synthèse et bibliographie. Bruxelles: Centre d'Etude et de Documentation Africaines. ↩

11. Hulstaert, G. (1958). Proverbes mongo. Tervuren: Musée Royal du Congo Belge. ↩