Kiluba

Kiluba, also known as Ciluba or Tshiluba, is a Bantu language of the Luba-Kasai branch spoken by the Luba people in the Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It has several million speakers and is one of the four national languages of the DRC, used in education, media, and local administration in parts of its region. Kiluba exists in regional varieties or dialects, which are largely mutually intelligible.

Linguistic classification and script: Kiluba belongs to the Niger-Congo language family, within the Atlantic-Congo and Bantu divisions, in the Luba-Kasai subgroup. It is written with a Latin-based alphabet and has a standardized orthography used in schools and publications.

Linguistic features: Kiluba exhibits noun class systems common to Bantu languages, with prefixes that mark agreement across verbs and adjectives. Word order is frequently described as subject–verb–object, with rich verbal morphology to indicate aspect, mood, and negation.

Sociolinguistic context: In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kiluba is recognized as a national language alongside Lingala, Swahili, and Kikongo. It is used in radio broadcasts, local government communication, and schooling at various levels in the Kasai region. The language has a long-standing oral tradition and has been the subject of written transcription and religious translations since the colonial era.

See also: Tshiluba; Luba people; Kasai region; Democratic Republic of the Congo.