Abstract
The existence of African native languages deteriorates vis-à-vis foreign languages such as English, French, Portuguese and Spanish. The former colonies keep using the later as their official languages. The status of the African native languages is either Mother Tongue (MT) or first language (L1), facing that of foreign language (FL) and second language (L2). Unfortunately, the functions of most of these languages are limited to oral communication because their scriptural forms do not exist. This study tries to draw the connections between status and the form, using the Larry (MT or vernacular language), the Kituba and Lingala (L1 or vehicular language) as main communicative languages in Brazzaville. Results show that these Congolese languages are gradually getting menaced and losing ground. This is due to the outstanding intellectualism that takes Congolese people – who are African people as well – to use more and more French words and expressions when speaking them daily. The use of the Roman alphabet would help the Congo, as some African countries have done it, to glocalize their languages in the written form in order to link their status, form and function better. Didactically, African children should first learn their MT and L1 orally and writingly before they tackle with the learning of foreign languages.
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