–Lwa or -Nwana
‘Strike, hit’ / ‘Fight (each other)’
Discussion Questions
- Over millennia, speakers developed regional elaborations on the meaning of the old root *-dù-. Why might some societies have reconceptualized *-dù- as a form of resistance, opposition, or even a form of plunder to elaborate, clarify, or replace the older, more widespread meanings of a fight, combat, dispute, etc.? What historical questions might the geography of these changes suggest about the geographies of violence in west central Africa? Consider what we know about the role of violence in generating slaves for local use and export during the Atlantic era and subsequent intensification of slave labor on west central African plantations before, during, and after the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
- Several of these languages attest synonyms to a term (mundele and related forms) often glossed as ‘white man’ but applied in earlier periods to both Europeans and Africans involved in the slave trade. What might attestations in Kongo Kituba, Yans, Mbala, and Nsong (the latter three spoken along the Kwilu River, upstream of the Atlantic-era market at Malebo Pool) tell us about the nature of interactions between different speech communities in this area during the era of the Atlantic slave trade?
How to cite this material: de Luna, Kathryn M. “-Lwa or -Nwana.” Atlantic Language Archive. Georgetown University. [Insert Access Date Here]. http://atlanticlangarchive.georgetown.edu/lwa-nwana/.
