Gross Barmen ( German : Groß Barmen) is a historic settlement and a recreational spa on the Swakop River in central Namibia , north of Windhoek . It is situated on the District Road 1972, 25 km south-west of Okahandja in the Otjozondjupa Region . Its close proximity to the capital Windhoek makes it a popular weekend destination for locals.
44-530: Originally known as Otjikango ( Otjiherero : "large fountain"), the site was inhabited by the Herero people . When Wesleyan missionaries arrived in Windhoek in 1844 at the invitation of Jonker Afrikaner , Rhenish missionaries Carl Hugo Hahn and Franz Heinrich Kleinschmidt , already resident there since 1842, feared conflict and moved on to Otjikango. Here they established the first Rhenish mission station to
88-421: A V- syllable at the start). In other words, a strong claim for this language family is that almost all words end in a vowel, precisely because closed syllables (CVC) are not permissible in most of the documented languages, as far as is understood. This tendency to avoid consonant clusters in some positions is important when words are imported from English or other non-Bantu languages. An example from Chewa :
132-668: A designation referring indiscriminately to language, culture, society, and race"." The Bantu languages descend from a common Proto-Bantu language , which is believed to have been spoken in what is now Cameroon in Central Africa . An estimated 2,500–3,000 years ago (1000 BC to 500 BC), speakers of the Proto-Bantu language began a series of migrations eastward and southward, carrying agriculture with them. This Bantu expansion came to dominate Sub-Saharan Africa east of Cameroon, an area where Bantu peoples now constitute nearly
176-414: A distant third place with 8.2 million speakers ( South Africa and Zimbabwe ), and Shona with less than 10 million speakers (if Manyika and Ndau are included), while Sotho-Tswana languages ( Sotho , Tswana and Pedi ) have more than 15 million speakers (across Botswana , Lesotho , South Africa, and Zambia ). Zimbabwe has Kalanga, Matebele, Nambiya, and Xhosa speakers. Ethnologue separates
220-593: A few months later he went back to Gross Barmen because the Eastern Herero, or Mbandjeru, had unexpectedly settled there. He had some success evangelizing to them, but was stymied when they left to join chief Maharero in Okahandja. Returning to Otjimbingwe once more, Brincker would be back in Gross Barmen in 1869, when the war was almost over. He set about immediately rebuilding the station, this time with
264-459: A period of reconstruction and expansion and was scheduled to be reopened in 2013. Herero language Herero (Otjiherero) is a Bantu language spoken by the Herero and Mbanderu peoples in Namibia and Botswana , as well as by small communities of people in southwestern Angola . There were 250,000 speakers in these countries between 2015 and 2018. Its linguistic distribution covers
308-980: A principal material at the University of Namibia . Otjiherero is also one of the six minority languages that are used by the Namibian State Radio (NBC). Gamsberg Macmillan, as of 2008 , has published the only dictionary in Otjiherero. The Hakaona variety is now considered a separate Bantu language, as sometimes is Zemba ( Otjizemba ). Maho (200) also removes Kuvale to Bantu Zone R.10, while differentiating North-West Herero (Kaokoland Herero, including Zemba and presumably Himba and Hakaona), R.311, and Botswana Herero (including Mahalapye Herero), R.312, as distinct from but closely related to Herero proper. Within Herero proper, he recognizes two dialects: Central Herero and Mbandero (East Herero). Northwest/Zemba
352-484: A school and church. In the years following the so-called Peace of Okahandja (September 13, 1870), which the missionaries fostered for a decade, boasted 251 residents and 130 children attending the school. After a visit back to Germany in February 1880, Brincker returned to German South West Africa , but this time went instead to Otjimbingwe. The mission station was operational until the start of Herero War in 1904, but
396-532: A zone called Hereroland , which is constituted of the region of Omaheke along with the Otjozondjupa and Kunene Regions . The Himba people , who are related to the Herero and Mbanderu, speak a dialect very close to Otjiherero. Many Herero-speakers live in Windhoek , the capital of Namibia. The sounds /f s l/ are found in loanwords. Because of the translation of missionary Gottlieb Viehe (1839–1901) of
440-581: Is found on either side of the Namibian–Angolan border. Central Herero covers a large area in central Namibia, with East Herero and a few islands to the east but still in Namibia. Botswana Herero consists of a few scattered islands in Botswana, with about 15% of the population of Herero proper. Ethnologue separates Zimba as a distinct language but retains Himba, East Herero, and Botswana Herero within
484-1174: Is hampered by insufficient data. Simplified phylogeny of northwestern branches of Bantu by Grollemund (2012): A40-50-60-70: Basaa languages , Bafia languages , Mbam languages , Beti language A10-20-30: Sawabantu languages , Manenguba languages A80-90: Makaa–Njem languages B20: Kele languages B10: Myene language B30: Tsogo languages C10-20-30: Ngondi–Ngiri languages , Mboshi languages , Bangi–Ntomba languages C40-D20-D32: Bati–Angba languages , Lega–Binja languages , Bira language B80-C60-70-80: Boma–Dzing languages , Soko languages , Tetela languages , Bushoong languages B40-H10-30-B50-60-70: Sira languages , Kongo languages , Yaka languages , Nzebi languages , Mbete languages , Teke languages L10-H40: Pende languages , Hungana language C50-D10: Soko languages , Lengola language D10-20-30-40-JD50: Mbole–Enya languages , Komo–Bira languages , Shi–Havu languages Other computational phylogenetic analyses of Bantu include Currie et al. (2013), Grollemund et al. (2015), Rexova et al. 2006, Holden et al., 2016, and Whiteley et al. 2018. Glottolog ( 2021 ) does not consider
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#1732798816683528-666: Is likely the innovative line cladistically . Northwest Bantu is not a coherent family, but even for Central Bantu the evidence is lexical, with little evidence that it is a historically valid group. Another attempt at a detailed genetic classification to replace the Guthrie system is the 1999 "Tervuren" proposal of Bastin, Coupez, and Mann. However, it relies on lexicostatistics , which, because of its reliance on overall similarity rather than shared innovations , may predict spurious groups of conservative languages that are not closely related . Meanwhile, Ethnologue has added languages to
572-548: Is mainly geographic. The term "narrow Bantu" was coined by the Benue–Congo Working Group to distinguish Bantu as recognized by Guthrie, from the Bantoid languages not recognized as Bantu by Guthrie. In recent times, the distinctiveness of Narrow Bantu as opposed to the other Southern Bantoid languages has been called into doubt, but the term is still widely used. There is no true genealogical classification of
616-459: Is the extensive use of affixes (see Sotho grammar and Ganda noun classes for detailed discussions of these affixes). Each noun belongs to a class , and each language may have several numbered classes, somewhat like grammatical gender in European languages. The class is indicated by a prefix that is part of the noun, as well as agreement markers on verb and qualificative roots connected with
660-914: The Democratic Republic of the Congo . The most widely spoken Bantu language by number of speakers is Swahili , with 16 million native speakers and 80 million L2 speakers (2015). Most native speakers of Swahili live in Tanzania , where it is a national language, while as a second language, it is taught as a mandatory subject in many schools in East Africa, and is a lingua franca of the East African Community . Other major Bantu languages include Lingala with more than 20 million speakers ( Congo , DRC ), followed by Zulu with 13.56 million speakers ( South Africa ), Xhosa at
704-431: The (Narrow) Bantu languages. Until recently most attempted classifications only considered languages that happen to fall within traditional Narrow Bantu, but there seems to be a continuum with the related languages of South Bantoid. At a broader level, the family is commonly split in two depending on the reflexes of proto-Bantu tone patterns: many Bantuists group together parts of zones A through D (the extent depending on
748-562: The Bible into Herero, at the end of the 19th century, the spoken language was transcribed to an alphabet based on the Latin script. Father Peter Heinrich Brincker (1836–1904) translated several theological works and songs. Long vowels are doubled. f and l are only used in loanwords. Otjiherero is taught in Namibian schools both as a native tongue and as a secondary language. It is included as
792-590: The Guthrie classification which Guthrie overlooked, while removing the Mbam languages (much of zone A), and shifting some languages between groups (much of zones D and E to a new zone J, for example, and part of zone L to K, and part of M to F) in an apparent effort at a semi-genetic, or at least semi-areal, classification. This has been criticized for sowing confusion in one of the few unambiguous ways to distinguish Bantu languages. Nurse & Philippson (2006) evaluate many proposals for low-level groups of Bantu languages, but
836-469: The Herero had taken refuge. The next Rhenish Missionary to settle in Gross Barmen was the Rev. Peter Heinrich Brincker . He married on February 10, 1864, and shortly after resumed the ministry at the station. He had to flee for his life from Nama attacks on the station no less than seven times, only to resettle it again. When the residents of the station finally fled in 1866, Brincker returned to Otjimbingwe, but
880-879: The Herero in Otjikango, but the Herero left the area to escape the recurrent attacks of Jonker Afrikaner's Nama in 1850, especially following his victory at Okahandja in August 1850. Hahn was ordered to report back to Germany, but he was reassigned to Kaapstad in November 1852. Since the Wesleyan missionaries had abandoned Windhoek to Jonker's raids, Hahn was hired to take their place but failed to secure it and arrived back in Barmen on September 13, 1853. In early 1856, he returned, but this time he settled in Otjimbingwe where
924-616: The Herero in late 1844. They named the place Barmen after the town Barmen (today part of Wuppertal ) in Germany where the headquarters of the Rhenish Missionary Society were located. The ruins of the missionary house are still visible. At that time the road network in South West Africa was being developed under the supervision, and at the initiative, of Jonker Afrikaner. Hahn and Kleinschmidt initiated
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#1732798816683968-475: The Herero language. However, it no longer recognizes Kuvale as a dialect but as a separate language. Bantu language The Bantu languages (English: UK : / ˌ b æ n ˈ t uː / , US : / ˈ b æ n t uː / Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a language family of about 600 languages that are spoken by the Bantu peoples of Central , Southern , Eastern and Southeast Africa . They form
1012-514: The adjective prefix ki- (representing the diminutive form of the word) and the verb subject prefix a- . Then comes perfect tense -me- and an object marker -ki- agreeing with implicit kitabu 'book' (from Arabic kitab ). Pluralizing to 'children' gives Vitoto vidogo vimekisoma ( Vana vadoko varikuverenga in Shona), and pluralizing to 'books' ( vitabu ) gives vitoto vidogo vimevisoma . Bantu words are typically made up of open syllables of
1056-465: The author) as Northwest Bantu or Forest Bantu , and the remainder as Central Bantu or Savanna Bantu . The two groups have been described as having mirror-image tone systems: where Northwest Bantu has a high tone in a cognate, Central Bantu languages generally have a low tone, and vice versa. Northwest Bantu is more divergent internally than Central Bantu, and perhaps less conservative due to contact with non-Bantu Niger–Congo languages; Central Bantu
1100-609: The beginning of a syllable can be readily observed in such languages as Shona, and the Makua languages . With few exceptions, such as Kiswahili and Rutooro , Bantu languages are tonal and have two to four register tones. Reduplication is a common morphological phenomenon in Bantu languages and is usually used to indicate frequency or intensity of the action signalled by the (unreduplicated) verb stem. Well-known words and names that have reduplication include: Repetition emphasizes
1144-483: The concept of "language". In addition, delegates at the African Languages Association of Southern Africa conference in 1984 reported that, in some places, the term Kintu has a derogatory significance. This is because kintu refers to "things" and is used as a dehumanizing term for people who have lost their dignity. In addition, Kintu is a figure in some mythologies. In the 1990s,
1188-413: The creation of a path from Windhoek to Barmen via Okahandja, and in 1850 this road, later known as Alter Baiweg ( Old Bay Path ), was extended via Otjimbingwe to Walvis Bay . This route developed into an important trade connection between the coast and Windhoek and was in use until 1900, when the railway line from Swakopmund was commissioned. Hahn taught Western farming techniques and tried to settle
1232-498: The entire population. Some other sources estimate the Bantu Expansion started closer to 3000 BC. The technical term Bantu, meaning "human beings" or simply "people", was first used by Wilhelm Bleek (1827–1875), as the concept is reflected in many of the languages of this group. A common characteristic of Bantu languages is that they use words such as muntu or mutu for "human being" or in simplistic terms "person", and
1276-403: The ground at 65 °C and is cooled down to around 40 °C for the thermal bath. Gross Barmen is managed by Namibia Wildlife Resorts (NWR), the company responsible for all national parks and official recreational areas in Namibia. Besides the thermal bath it featured a petrol station, a restaurant, and overnight accommodation until 2010 but became the biggest loss maker of NWR. It is now in
1320-426: The largely mutually intelligible Kinyarwanda and Kirundi , which together have 20 million speakers. The similarity among dispersed Bantu languages had been observed as early as the 17th century. The term Bantu as a name for the group was not coined but "noticed" or "identified" (as Bâ-ntu ) by Wilhelm Bleek as the first European in 1857 or 1858, and popularized in his Comparative Grammar of 1862. He noticed
1364-445: The larger ethnolinguistic phylum named by 19th-century European linguists. Bleek's identification was inspired by the anthropological observation of groups frequently self-identifying as "people" or "the true people" (as is the case, for example, with the term Khoikhoi , but this is a kare "praise address" and not an ethnic name). The term narrow Bantu , excluding those languages classified as Bantoid by Malcolm Guthrie (1948),
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1408-519: The largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages . The total number of Bantu languages is estimated at between 440 and 680 distinct languages, depending on the definition of "language" versus "dialect" . Many Bantu languages borrow words from each other, and some are mutually intelligible . Some of the languages are spoken by a very small number of people, for example the Kabwa language
1452-493: The noun. Plurality is indicated by a change of class, with a resulting change of prefix. All Bantu languages are agglutinative . The verb has a number of prefixes, though in the western languages these are often treated as independent words. In Swahili , for example, Kitoto kidogo kimekisoma (for comparison, Kamwana kadoko karikuverenga in Shona language ) means 'The small child has read it [a book]'. kitoto 'child' governs
1496-414: The older geographic classification by Guthrie relevant for its ongoing classification based on more recent linguistic studies, and divides Bantu into four main branches: Bantu A-B10-B20-B30 , Central-Western Bantu , East Bantu and Mbam-Bube-Jarawan . Guthrie reconstructed both the phonemic inventory and the vocabulary of Proto-Bantu. The most prominent grammatical characteristic of Bantu languages
1540-407: The plural prefix for human nouns starting with mu- (class 1) in most languages is ba- (class 2), thus giving bantu for "people". Bleek, and later Carl Meinhof , pursued extensive studies comparing the grammatical structures of Bantu languages. The most widely used classification is an alphanumeric coding system developed by Malcolm Guthrie in his 1948 classification of the Bantu languages. It
1584-496: The repeated word in the context that it is used. For instance, "Mwenda pole hajikwai," means "He who goes slowly doesn't trip," while, "Pole pole ndio mwendo," means "A slow but steady pace wins the race." The latter repeats "pole" to emphasize the consistency of slowness of the pace. As another example, "Haraka haraka" would mean "hurrying just for the sake of hurrying" (reckless hurry), as in "Njoo! Haraka haraka" [come here! Hurry, hurry]. In contrast, there are some words in some of
1628-464: The result is not a complete portrayal of the family. Glottolog has incorporated many of these into their classification. The languages that share Dahl's law may also form a valid group, Northeast Bantu . The infobox at right lists these together with various low-level groups that are fairly uncontroversial, though they continue to be revised. The development of a rigorous genealogical classification of many branches of Niger–Congo, not just Bantu,
1672-410: The term Kintu was still occasionally used by South African linguists. But in contemporary decolonial South African linguistics, the term Ntu languages is used. Within the fierce debate among linguists about the word "Bantu", Seidensticker (2024) indicates that there has been a "profound conceptual trend in which a "purely technical [term] without any non-linguistic connotations was transformed into
1716-546: The term to represent the word for "people" in loosely reconstructed Proto-Bantu , from the plural noun class prefix *ba- categorizing "people", and the root *ntʊ̀- "some (entity), any" (e.g. Xhosa umntu "person", abantu "people"; Zulu umuntu "person", abantu "people"). There is no native term for the people who speak Bantu languages because they are not an ethnic group . People speaking Bantu languages refer to their languages by ethnic endonyms , which did not have an indigenous concept prior to European contact for
1760-453: The type CV (consonant-vowel) with most languages having syllables exclusively of this type. The Bushong language recorded by Vansina , however, has final consonants, while slurring of the final syllable (though written) is reported as common among the Tonga of Malawi. The morphological shape of Bantu words is typically CV, VCV, CVCV, VCVCV, etc.; that is, any combination of CV (with possibly
1804-406: The word "school", borrowed from English, and then transformed to fit the sound patterns of this language, is sukulu . That is, sk- has been broken up by inserting an epenthetic -u- ; -u has also been added at the end of the word. Another example is buledi for "bread". Similar effects are seen in loanwords for other non-African CV languages like Japanese . However, a clustering of sounds at
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1848-414: Was destroyed by Herero insurgents. The settlement also had a police station at that time, and a military fort which was demolished during the uprising. The village was destroyed by burning by German colonial troops under the command of Leutnant Eugen Mansfeld on 17 February 1904. The recreational centre at Gross Barmen was built in 1977. The water of the hot spring comes from a depth of 2,500 m. It exits
1892-477: Was estimated in 2007 to be spoken by only 8500 people but was assessed to be a distinct language. The total number of Bantu speakers is estimated to be around 350 million in 2015 (roughly 30% of the population of Africa or 5% of the world population ). Bantu languages are largely spoken southeast of Cameroon , and throughout Central , Southern , Eastern , and Southeast Africa . About one-sixth of Bantu speakers , and one-third of Bantu languages, are found in
1936-557: Was introduced in the 1960s. The prefix ba- specifically refers to people. Endonymically, the term for cultural objects, including language, is formed with the ki- noun class (Nguni ísi- ), as in KiSwahili (Swahili language and culture), IsiZulu (Zulu language and culture) and KiGanda (Ganda religion and culture). In the 1980s, South African linguists suggested referring to these languages as KiNtu. The word kintu exists in some places, but it means "thing", with no relation to
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