FSI Kituba Basic Course
Master the Kituba Language Today
Everything you need to learn Kituba is now with the Foreign Service Institute's course.
Get the most comprehensive Kituba course ever created by the FSI and actually learn the language with hours of audio, mp3s, workbooks and PDFs.
Here’s What You Get
Plenty of audio, structured lessons, and clear learning units — everything you need to stay on track and make real progress.
What Language Students Say
Michael R.
Diplomat
"The FSI course materials are incredibly comprehensive. The audio lessons and workbooks helped me achieve fluency much faster than I expected."
Sarah L.
Language Enthusiast
"The bundle download made everything so convenient. Having all materials organized and instantly accessible has been fantastic for my learning journey."
James T.
Business Professional
"The quality of these FSI materials is outstanding. The structured approach and thorough explanations have made learning a new language much more manageable."
What is the FSI Kituba Basic Course?
This FSI Kituba course was first published in 1963 and is made up of 35 units. Each unit was originally accompanied by an audio recording, but these are currently unavailable.
Nevertheless, by working through the course, you will learn the basic language required to function in a range of common situations such as meeting someone for the first time, making a simple phone call or asking for directions.
On finishing it, you should be able to use the language confidently to communicate with Kituba speakers with whom you have no other common language.
How was FSI Kituba Basic originally used?
FSI Kituba was originally designed for US diplomatic staff who were preparing for postings in areas where Kituba is spoken.
The course consisted of six hours of class time per day along with two additional hours of personal study. They spoke only Kituba in class, and even outside of lesson time, they were encouraged to speak Kituba among themselves.
In this way, within only around six months, they were able to acquire a relatively high level of proficiency in the language, allowing them to assume their roles in their foreign postings.
How can you use FSI Kituba Basic?
For anyone who needs to learn the basics of the language, this free Kituba course will be one of the only sources of information available.
However, since you won’t be able to enjoy the same conditions US diplomatic staff benefited from when studying, you will have to adapt the materials to get the most out of them – especially since this course currently has no accompanying audio.
If you are determined to learn this language, I suggest you try to find another source of audio to help you with the pronunciation of the language and then use the dialogs and notes included here to deepen your knowledge of Kituba.
For further details about how best to use these materials, check out my suggestions for making the most of the FSI course in the blog section.
Taking it further
Whatever the quality of your study materials, you can never learn a language without practicing it.
This is perhaps even more true when learning something like Kituba since there are so few resources available to help you. For this reason, it is essential that you take the basics you learn from this course and go out into the real world and put them to use.
Try to find native speakers to converse with, and above all, try to make using Kituba a part of your daily life. Then, when you do, you may surprise yourself with how quickly you begin to pick up this fascinating but rarely studied language.