Bangi

Bangi, also called Bobangi, is a Bantu language spoken on both banks of the Ubangi and Congo rivers around their confluence, from Mbandaka to Bolobo. It is the language of the Bobangi river traders, and its dialects include Bonga, Likuba, Likwala, Mpama and Nunu-Bobangi.

In the early 1800s Bobangi canoe merchants carried it between Stanley Pool and the mouth of the Ubangi, and their wars against the declining Tio Kingdom opened the river stretches to their commerce, making Bangi the leading trade language of the western Congo. Its vocabulary forms the main lexical base of Lingala, the restructured river language that later grew out of it.