In My Tongue

In terms of Lingala: So my parents never really spoke it with me. They spoke it with each other. So then at one point, I was getting kind of annoyed because I... I kind of understood that they were speaking about me but they were... They just didn't want me to know what they were saying.

So that's how I started picking up Lingala, just like, trying to figure out what they were saying. So then sometimes, I would be like "Oh, what does this word mean?" And then, they would tell me, and I'd be like, "Okay, cool..." And then, I would remember what that word meant, and then figure out what they were saying that way. And a lot of it too is just like... just the way someone says something, you can kind of get a sense of what they mean.

So then, sometimes, as an adult I would like, think a word meant a certain thing, and then find out that it meant something else, but it was because of the way it was said. For me, it felt like it meant a certain thing, so yeah, I think that would be my relationship with Lingala...

And also, I can't understand when people are singing in Lingala, that always freaks me out. Because people sing differently than they talk, so I'm like I don't... I don't know what they're... Like, I can identify individual words, but I don't know what they're saying in general. So yeah, that was a lot, but those would be my memories.