Supplementary material for "Native Languages of the Democratic Republic of Congo" by Helena Lopez Palma, published in BHL 3 - HLPA 1 (2022)

These are the supplementary materials for an article published in Brill’s Handbooks in Linguistics 3 (subseries: Handbooks of Language Policies in Africa 1) entitled 'Native Languages of the Democratic Republic of Congo', by Helena Lopez Palma, with DOI:10.1163/9789004516724_007.

DRC is a multilingual country where more than 200 native languages are spoken among a population of 92,798,854 inhabitants. Language variety strongly evidences the genetic force of the human language faculty for creating symbolic systems. Congolese native languages spoken by local communities are unique and precious coding systems that constitute an important asset of the heritage of the DRC. Today’s science and technology focuses on developing cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence technology. In that aspect, the rich language variety of drc is of great advantage, since much of ai Technology is applied to natural language data. Moreover, many Congolese people have become by now highly educated scientists who could lead digital innovative groups which would take care of preserving their valuable native languages. So it is a great historical moment for transforming Congolese linguistic data into industries that would return progress and social welfare to the people. We review some outstand- ing linguistic properties of 3 bantu languages (Cilubà, Lɔmɔ́ngɔ, Nzadi), and asses the depth of knowledge and expertise of their mother tongues by the Congolese population and the use of these indigenous languages in education. We then consider the adequacy of Education Plans to boosting, promoting and preserving the unique multilingual wealth of DRC.

此乃收录于《布鲁尔语言学手册》第3卷（子系列：非洲语言政策手册第1卷）中，由Helena Lopez Palma所著，题为《刚果民主共和国的本土语言》一文之补充材料。该文由DOI:10.1163/9789004516724_007标识。刚果民主共和国是一个多语言国家，在该国92,798,854名居民中，有超过200种本土语言被使用。语言多样性充分证明了人类语言官能创造符号系统的遗传力量。由当地社区使用的刚果本土语言是独特的、宝贵的编码系统，构成了刚果民主共和国文化遗产的重要组成部分。今日之科学技术专注于发展尖端的人工智能技术。在此方面，刚果丰富的语言多样性具有极大的优势，因为人工智能技术的许多应用都是针对自然语言数据的。此外，许多刚果人已成为高度受教育的高级科学家，他们能够领导数字创新团队，负责保护他们宝贵的本土语言。因此，将刚果的语料数据转化为能够回馈进步和社会福利的产业，正是一个具有重大历史意义的时代。我们回顾了三种班图语（基卢巴语、洛莫松戈语、恩扎迪语）的一些卓越的语言特性，并评估了刚果人民对其母语的深厚知识和专业技能，以及这些土著语言在教育中的运用。随后，我们考虑了教育计划在促进、提升和保护刚果独特的多语言财富方面的适宜性。