Beautiful African
Languages
TYPE DESIGN // IDENTITY // PRINT
This week a Lingala song comes to the top of my inspirational playlist. It’s been on repeat for hours.
What stirs up my emotions is the ethnic nature of the sounds and the smoky-flavoured voices of the singers. Everything is bound together by a simple rhythm emanating from pure African instruments.
I understand the lyrics from the English version. However, I can’t differentiate one word from another in the Lingala rendition!
Lingala – a language spoken by about twenty million people in Congo and other countries on the continent – is elegant. I’m reminded of all the other beautiful languages in Africa. They include Zulu, Siswati, Yoruba, Oromo, Berber, Ewe, Shona, Swahili and Hausa.
The letterings are the visual representations of the inner feelings these languages invoke in me.
