- Countries:
- D.R. of Congo
- Topics:
- Language
Blogging from the Democratic Republic of Congo, John writes about the richness and complexity of Lingala: Then there’s the word “poto” which I think is “mpoto” in the classic Lingala (but that’s a whole other discussion…). It means Europe, but I’ve discovered that it also means the U.S. I haven’t probed too far into the meaning, but pretty much for the Congolese it means anywhere where the white people live. “Malili” is related to “moi” because it means both “cool” or “cold” (as in a cold beer, which is my most frequent use of it) and also “shade.”
3 comments
Join the Conversation
Recent Articles also in Sub-Saharan Africa
- › Madagascar: Traditional and New Media Discuss Crisis Reporting
- › DRC: Goma's Makeover for Independence Day
- › South Africa: Storm Brewing Between Government, Striking Doctors & Unions
- › South Africa: To vuvuzela or not to vuvuzela?
- › Ghana: New Media in the Hands of Young Ghanaians
Recent Links also in Sub-Saharan Africa
Read an interview at Black Looks with Nigerian digital artist, Kenneth Shofela Coker.
Erik discusses Obama's new media strategies for his trip to Ghana: We’re launching an SMS platform to allow citizens to submit questions, comments and words of welcome (in English and in French) . Using a local SMS short code in Ghana (1731) , Nigeria (32969) , South Africa (31958) and Kenya (5683), as well as a long code across the rest of the world*
Kenyan Poet, singer and actor Grand Master Masese fears for his life after a series of bizarre phone incidences in the past week.
On Friday night, he received an SMS threatening his life. It read: “Umekua ukijifanya mjanja but mwisho wako umefika” (You think you are clever but your end is here).”
Funding drive
Global Voices Email Updates
Get summaries of new stories from Global Voices in your inbox daily, weekly, or just sign up for important announcements.
Our Other Sites
Special Projects
This site is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
Please read our attribution policy.
Steve Sharra19 posts 
Nicholas Laughlin169 posts 
Rebekah Heacock24 posts 
tan10 posts 
Tarek Amr53 posts 
Jorge Gobbi32 posts 
Gilad Lotan44 posts 
Sylwia Presley7 posts 
Fozia Mohamed34 posts 
Simon Maghakyan23 posts 
Kevin Rennie9 posts 
Ljubisa Bojic30 posts
Hey for some reason i thought the article would be longer, in any case doesn’t “moi” means the sun or the heat from the sun?
poto is short for portugal since the first whites to arrive in the area were from portugal the native referred to any place white people live as poto short for portugal. Today it simply means the west>>
Moi does mean sun, and malali means sick whereas the word for cool is literally translated as hot, not or moto te, though that may also be a word for cool (Nabosani yango). However, there are variations on the language as I learned in Rep of Congo, not DRC.