Lingala · DRC · Everywhere
Free. Beautiful. Yours to share.
Lingala gives Congolese everywhere a daily phrase from home, wrapped in a beautifully designed culture card — ready to download and post on Instagram, TikTok, or WhatsApp in under thirty seconds.
Greetings
A respectful greeting
lo-SA-ko
Losako is the warm, respectful way to announce yourself and greet — the gesture of someone genuinely glad to be in front of you.
What's inside
1,207 words
A searchable Lingala dictionary with audio, examples, and a cultural note on every entry.
Open dictionary →126 verbs · all conjugations
Every verb across six tenses and six subject prefixes, with color-coded morphology and audio for every form.
Browse verbs →1 → 1M+
Learn to count from one to a million in Lingala — seven modes, audio, quizzes, mastery tracking.
Start counting →Congolese names & meanings
Discover the Lingala name that fits you. Search by meaning, sound, or family tradition.
Find your name →What Lingala is
The person who uses Lingala is not trying to learn the language. They are trying to express something about who they are.
A second-generation Congolese person in Brussels, London, Montreal, or Atlanta doesn't open an app to study vocabulary. They open it because they are proud of where their family is from — and they have never had a beautiful, ready-made object to express that pride with.
Lingala gives them that object. The language is the packaging. The identity is the gift.
How it works
No loading. No login. No onboarding. The card is there the moment you open the app — a new Lingala phrase every day, the same one for every Congolese person worldwide.
Every phrase comes with a cultural note written with warmth and depth — not a dictionary definition. Where it comes from, when elders use it, what it carries emotionally.
One tap renders a professional 1080×1080 image to your camera roll. Post it on Instagram, TikTok, or send it in your family WhatsApp group. No watermark that embarrasses. No screenshot required.
Cultural context
Hello
MM-bo-te
Cultural note
Mbote is the first word most people learn in Lingala, and the one you will use most. It works morning, noon and night, to one person or a crowd. Say “Mbote” with a small nod and you are already speaking the language of home.
Read more about this phrase →
The cultural notes
Every other language tool tells you what a word means. Lingala tells you what a word carries.
The cultural notes are written not as textbook definitions but as a Congolese elder talking to you about their language — with pride, warmth, and humor. They connect phrases to history, to music, to the specific social contexts that give language its meaning.
Each card has a short note for the card itself, and a deeper expanded note for anyone who wants to go further. One is for Instagram. The other is for the person who remembers their grandmother saying it.
Community
The phrase database grows with contributions from Congolese communities worldwide. Know a proverb your grandmother uses? A phrase from your neighborhood in Kinshasa that no textbook has ever captured? Submit it. Every addition that makes it into the rotation is credited to the person who shared it.
Suggest a phraseSubmitted from Brussels
Nalingi yo · I love you
Submitted from Montreal
Tokomonana · We'll meet again
Submitted from Atlanta
Bolingo · Love
Jump in
No catch. No paywall. No account.
Open it now. See today's phrase. Download the card. Share it with someone who knows where that language comes from.