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Mongo and Nkundo belong to the Bongo Group (Guthrie C61) of Bantu. "Mongo is the name most currently used for a whole cluster of more or less closely related dialects. Originally the term was applied only to the northern section, with Nkundo being restricted to the southern part (between the equator and the River Kasai.) Nowadays, the tendency is to use the term (Lo-)Mongo for the whole ethnic/linguistic group, reserving Nkundo for the sections of the western part" (Hulstaert, personal communication, 1986). (Webbook)
Ethnologue lists the classification as: Niger-Congo, Atlantic-Congo, Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, Bantoid, Southern, Narrow Bantu, Northwest, C, Mongo (C.70)
Spoken in northwestern Dem. Rep. of the Congo and around Mbandaka. (Webbook)
400,000 (1995) (Ethnologue)
Voegelin and Voegelin (1977) report five dialects of Mongo/Nkundo, of which Nkundo is the largest. (Webbook)
According to Ethnologue, dialects are:
Dialect or language cluster:
The Longombe dialect is spoken along the road between Boende and Wema, is closest to the Bakutu dialect, and is distinct from the Lingombe language. Ntomba-Inongo, Ntomba-Bikoro, and Konda may be separate languages. (Ethnologue)
Hulstaert reports that "Mongo is used both as a local language by the Western-Central dialect cluster defined above and as a lingua franca by the other dialect speakers in the basins of Lulonga, Tshuapa, and their affluents. It is also spoken as a second language by the limitroph Ngombe between the rivers Ruki and Ikelemba." (Webbook)
Lingala is increasing in use [among Mongo/Nkundo speakers] (Ethnologue)
Different orthographies have been developed by the Catholic and Protestant missions. To our knowledge, neither has received official status. (Webbook) [needs update]
Several language samples are shown on the "Language Museum" site (not sure what or whose orthographies they follow):
We are not aware of any localisation efforts.
Dwyer, David (1997), Webbook of African Languages, http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/hiermenu.html (page on "Mongo/Nkundo," http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/Mongo_root.html )
The Linguist List, "The Mongo-Nkundu Language," http://linguistlist.org/forms/langs/LLDescription.cfm?code=lol
SIL International, Ethnologue: Languages of the World, "Mongo-Nkundu," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=lol
SIL International, "ISO 639 Code Tables," http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/codes.asp
U.S. Library of Congress, "ISO 639.2: Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages: Alpha-3 codes arranged alphabetically by the English name of language," http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/English_list.php
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