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94-601: The proposed family would be the third-largest in the world by number of native speakers, with around 700 million people as of 2015. Within Niger–Congo, the Bantu languages alone account for 350 million people (2015), or half the total Niger–Congo speaking population. The most widely spoken Niger–Congo languages by number of native speakers are Yoruba , Igbo , Fula , Lingala , Ewe , Fon , Ga-Dangme , Shona , Sesotho , Xhosa , Zulu , Akan , and Mooré . The most widely spoken by

188-533: A language family of about 600 languages that are spoken by the Bantu peoples of Central , Southern , Eastern and Southeast Africa . They form 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

282-421: 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 :

376-585: A blend of typological and racial criteria. Thus, Friedrich Müller , in his ambitious classification (1876–88), separated the 'Negro' and Bantu languages. Likewise, the Africanist Karl Richard Lepsius considered Bantu to be of African origin, and many 'Mixed Negro languages' as products of an encounter between Bantu and intruding Asiatic languages. In this period a relation between Bantu and languages with Bantu-like (but less complete) noun class systems began to emerge. Some authors saw

470-493: A branch co-ordinate with Niger–Congo as a whole; consequently, he renamed the family Congo-Kordofanian , later Niger–Kordofanian . Greenberg's work on African languages, though initially greeted with scepticism, became the prevailing view among scholars. Bennet and Sterk (1977) presented an internal reclassification based on lexicostatistics that laid the foundation for the regrouping in Bendor-Samuel (1989). Kordofanian

564-439: A clear preference for open syllables of the type CV (Consonant Vowel). The typical word structure of Proto–Niger–Congo (though it has not been reconstructed) is thought to have been CVCV, a structure still attested in, for example, Bantu, Mande and Ijoid – in many other branches this structure has been reduced through phonological change. Verbs are composed of a root followed by one or more extensional suffixes. Nouns consist of

658-668: 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

752-460: A disproportionate influence on conceptions of what Proto–Niger–Congo may have been like. The only stage higher than Proto-Bantu that has been reconstructed is a pilot project by Stewart, who since the 1970s has reconstructed the common ancestor of the Potou-Tano and Bantu languages, without so far considering the hundreds of other languages which presumably descend from that same ancestor. Over

846-414: 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

940-516: A form in Bantu and in Atlantic languages, or between Bantu and Mande, we have all grounds to trace this form back to Niger–Congo. If we establish such a relationship between Mel and Kru or between Mande and Dogon, we don't have enough reason to claim it Niger–Congo. In other words, all Niger–Congo languages are equal, but Bantu languages are "more equal" than the others." Glottolog (2013) accepts

1034-693: A large increase in the population of venomous snakes in the Duguri District , Alkaleri Local Government Area , Bauchi State . A July 2013 report indicated that over 200 people in the district had died of snakebite . The General Hospital in Kaltungo , Gombe State in Nigeria, is the nearest location for treatment of snakebite; "whoever is lucky to make it to Kaltungo is treated in only two days and then they return home." Benue Hike Tourism and Conservation Foundation , in an attempt to keep

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1128-552: A number of cases correspond to modern groupings. An early sketch of the extent of Niger–Congo as one language family can be found in Koelle's observation, echoed in Bleek (1856), that the Atlantic languages used prefixes just like many Southern African languages. Subsequent work of Bleek, and some decades later the comparative work of Meinhof , solidly established Bantu as a linguistic unit. In many cases, wider classifications employed

1222-462: A result of discovery of numerous related forms, for example, in Mande and Adamawa. It appeared as a result of comparison between the Bantu languages, for which the classical comparative method was possible to be applied and which were reliably reconstructed, with other African languages. Niger–Congo does not exist without Bantu. We need to say clearly that if we establish a genetic relationship between

1316-407: A root originally preceded by a noun class prefix of (C)V- shape which is often eroded by phonological change. Several branches of Niger–Congo have a regular phonological contrast between two classes of consonants. Pending more clarity as to the precise nature of this contrast, it is commonly characterized as a contrast between fortis and lenis consonants. Many Niger–Congo languages' vowel harmony

1410-654: A series of articles published between 1949 and 1954, he argued that Westermann's 'West Sudanic' and Bantu formed a single genetic family, which he named Niger–Congo; that Bantu constituted a subgroup of the Benue–Congo branch; that Adamawa-Eastern, previously not considered to be related, was another member of this family; and that Fula belonged to the West Atlantic languages. Just before these articles were collected in final book form ( The Languages of Africa ) in 1963, he amended his classification by adding Kordofanian as

1504-545: A valid genealogical group. Likewise, Mande is often assumed to be the second-most distant branch based on its lack of the noun-class system prototypical of the Niger–Congo family. Other branches lacking any trace of the noun-class system are Dogon and Ijaw, whereas the Talodi branch of Kordofanian does have cognate noun classes, suggesting that Kordofanian is also not a unitary group. Pozdniakov (2012) stated: "The hypothesis of kinship between Niger–Congo languages didn't appear as

1598-449: A “disaster risk management analysis” and advised Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) to take proactive steps to mitigate the impact of climate change. The agency advised that water bodies across some states be desilted and dredged regularly to make water available for various purposes. The agency urged relevant institutions to carry out routine monitoring of dams and water bodies to ensure their operation rule curve for reservoirs

1692-527: Is [+ATR], the vowels appear in their underlying form. This form of vowel harmony control is best exhibited in West African languages. For example, in Nawuri, the diminutive suffix /-bi/ will cause the underlying [−ATR] vowels in a word to become phonetically [+ATR]. There are two types of vowels which affect the harmony process. These are known as neutral or opaque vowels. Neutral vowels do not harmonize to

1786-456: Is a geographic grouping, not a genetic one, named for the Kordofan region. These are minor languages, spoken by a total of about 100,000 people according to 1980s estimates. Katla and Rashad languages show isoglosses with Benue–Congo that the other families lack. The endangered or extinct Laal , Mpre and Jalaa languages are often assigned to Niger–Congo. Niger–Congo as it is known today

1880-529: Is a ten-vowel language. This is a language in which all of the vowels of the language participate in the harmony system, producing five harmonic pairs. Vowel inventories of this type are still found in some branches of Niger–Congo, for example in the Ghana Togo Mountain languages . However, this is the rarer inventory as oftentimes there are one or more vowels that are not part of a harmonic pair. This has resulted in seven- and nine-vowel systems being

1974-663: Is adhered to. On September 23, 2022, flooding affected all riverine local government areas of Benue, according to the state Commissioner for Water Resources and Environment, Godwin Oyiwona. The flooding affected Makurdi , Agatu , Logo, Guma, Buruku , Otukpo , and Gwer-West . The government worked to mitigate flooding effects and released funds for cleaning the Idye Basin. In October 2022, farmers in Adamawa State struggled to clear off remnants of crops destroyed by

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2068-406: Is based on the [ATR] ( advanced tongue root ) feature. In this type of vowel harmony, the position of the root of the tongue in regards to backness is the phonetic basis for the distinction between two harmonizing sets of vowels. In its fullest form, this type involves two classes, each of five vowels. The roots are then divided into [+ATR] and [−ATR] categories. This feature is lexically assigned to

2162-482: Is characterised by the noun class systems of its languages. Atlantic–Congo largely corresponds to Mukarovsky's "Western Nigritic" phylum. The polyphyletic Atlantic group accounts for about 35 million speakers as of 2016, mostly accounted for by Fula and Wolof speakers. Atlantic is not considered to constitute a valid group. The putative Niger–Congo languages outside of the Atlantic–Congo family are centred in

2256-1174: 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

2350-433: Is helping to identify clusters and units that allow for the application of the historical-comparative method. Only the reconstruction of lower-level units, instead of "big picture" contributions based on mass comparison, can help to verify (or disprove) our present concept of Niger–Congo as a genetic grouping consisting of Benue–Congo plus Volta–Niger, Kwa, Adamawa plus Gur, Kru, the so-called Kordofanian languages, and probably

2444-666: 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

2538-548: 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

2632-497: Is supported. The Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP) also groups many Niger–Congo branches together. Dimmendaal , Crevels, and Muysken (2020) stated: "Greenberg's hypothesis of Niger–Congo phylum has sometimes been taken as an established fact rather than a hypothesis awaiting further proof, but there have also been attempts to look at his argumentation in more detail. Much of the discussion concerning Niger–Congo after Greenberg's seminal contribution in fact centered around

2726-459: Is that there is articulatory difficulty in advancing the tongue root when the tongue body is low in order to produce a low [+ATR] vowel. Therefore, the vowel inventory for nine-vowel languages is generally: And seven-vowel languages have one of two inventories: Note that in the nine-vowel language, the missing vowel is, in fact, [ə], [a]'s counterpart, as would be expected. The fact that ten vowels have been reconstructed for proto-Ijoid has led to

2820-459: 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

2914-617: Is this language family's relationship to the Kordofanian languages , now spoken in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan , which is not contiguous with the remainder of the Niger–Congo-language-speaking region and is at the northeasternmost extent of the current Niger–Congo linguistic region. The current prevailing linguistic view is that Kordofanian languages are part of the Niger–Congo language family and that these may be

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3008-815: The Adamawa Plateau of northern Cameroon , from where it flows west, and through the town of Garoua and Lagdo Reservoir , into Nigeria south of the Mandara mountains , and through Jimeta , Ibi and Makurdi before meeting the Niger River at Lokoja . Large tributaries are the Faro River , the Gongola River and the Mayo Kébbi , which connects it with the Logone River (part of

3102-567: The Atlantic languages , which do not form one branch, and Volta–Congo . It comprises more than 80% of the Niger–Congo speaking population, or close to 600 million people (2015). The proposed Savannas group combines Adamawa , Ubangian and Gur . Outside of the Savannas group, Volta–Congo comprises Kru , Kwa (or "West Kwa"), Volta–Niger (also "East Kwa" or "West Benue–Congo"), and Benue–Congo (or "East Benue–Congo"). Volta–Niger includes

3196-914: 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

3290-559: The Lake Chad system) during floods . Other tributaries include Taraba River and River Katsina Ala . At the point of confluence, the Benue exceeds the Niger by volume. The mean discharge before 1960 was 3,477 cubic metres per second (122,800 cu ft/s) for the Benue and 2,863 cubic metres per second (101,100 cu ft/s) for the Niger . During the following decades ,

3384-465: The Niger River . The size of its catchment basin is 319,000 km (123,000 sq mi). Almost its entire length of approximately 1,400 kilometres (870 mi) is navigable during the summer months . As a result, it is an important transportation route in the regions through which it flows. The name Benue comes from Binuwe, meaning 'Mother of Waters’ in the Batta language . The Benue rises in

3478-548: The Ubangian languages , centred in the Central African Republic , as part of the Niger–Congo language family is disputed. Ubangian was grouped with Niger–Congo by Greenberg (1963), and later authorities concurred, but it was questioned by Dimmendaal (2008). The Bantu expansion , beginning around 1000 BC, swept across much of Central and Southern Africa , leading to the assimilation and extinction of many of

3572-519: The noun-classifier system of Central Sudanic, commonly reflected in a tripartite general - singulative - plurative number system, triggered the development or elaboration of the noun-class system of the Atlantic–Congo languages , with tripartite number marking surviving in the Plateau and Gur languages of Niger–Congo, and the lexical similarities being due to loans. Niger–Congo languages have

3666-431: 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

3760-733: The 17 ecological intervention projects, was approved by the President in the fourth quarter of 2017 and completed in 48 weeks. The project aimed to address the devastating effects of erosion and flood in the region. News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported that Idye Community was among the worst-hit areas of the 2017 flood that displaced over 120,000 persons in the Benue capital, Makurdi . Floods devastated more than 200 households in Makurdi . The Benue River flooded in October 2012, resulting in

3854-477: The 1960s. However, there has been active debate for many decades over the appropriate subclassifications of the languages in this language family, which is a key tool used in localising a language's place of origin. No definitive " Proto-Niger–Congo " lexicon or grammar has been developed for the language family as a whole. An important unresolved issue in determining the time and place where the Niger–Congo languages originated and their range prior to recorded history

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3948-496: The 21 local government areas in the state. Within three months, 12 Local Government Areas (LGAs) were submerged, affecting 82,730 residents, 13,788 households, 51 people injured, and 27 deaths. Farmlands worth billions of naira were destroyed. President Muhammadu Buhari inaugurated a 3.35-km drainage channel project in Makurdi , Benue , to address ecological challenges in the Idye Community. The project, part of

4042-590: 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

4136-651: The Kordofanian branch is generally included in the Niger–Congo languages, some researchers do not agree with its inclusion. Glottolog 3.4 (2019) does not accept that the Kordofanian branches ( Lafofa , Talodi and Heiban ) or the difficult-to-classify Laal language have been demonstrated to be Atlantic–Congo languages. It otherwise accepts the family but not its inclusion within a broader Niger–Congo. Glottolog also considers Ijoid , Mande , and Dogon to be independent language phyla that have not been demonstrated to be related to each other. The Atlantic–Congo group

4230-430: The [ATR] value of the word, and instead maintain their own [ATR] value. The vowels that follow them, however, will receive the [ATR] value of the root. Opaque vowels maintain their own [ATR] value as well, but they affect the harmony process behind them. All of the vowels following an opaque vowel will harmonize with the [ATR] value of the opaque vowel instead of the [ATR] vowel of the root. The vowel inventory listed above

4324-514: 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

4418-492: The area at some point in prehistory where they were an isolated linguistic community from the beginning. There is more agreement regarding the place of origin of Benue–Congo , the largest subfamily of the group. Within Benue–Congo, the place of origin of the Bantu languages as well as time at which it started to expand is known with great specificity. Blench (2004), relying particularly on prior work by Kay Williamson and P. De Wolf, argued that Benue–Congo probably originated at

4512-465: 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

4606-557: 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

4700-483: 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,

4794-431: The confluence of the Benue and Niger Rivers in central Nigeria . These estimates of the place of origin of the Benue–Congo language family do not fix a date for the start of that expansion, other than that it must have been sufficiently prior to the Bantu expansion to allow for the diversification of the languages within this language family that includes Bantu. The classification of the relatively divergent family of

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4888-472: The continuing reassessment of Niger–Congo's "internal structure is due largely to the preliminary nature of Greenberg's classification, explicitly based as it was on a methodology that doesn't produce proofs for genetic affiliations between languages but rather aims at identifying "likely candidates."...The ongoing descriptive and documentary work on individual languages and their varieties, greatly expanding our knowledge on formerly little-known linguistic regions,

4982-459: The core with noun-class systems, the Atlantic–Congo languages , apart from the recent inclusion of some of the Kordofanian groups, but not Niger–Congo as a whole. They list the following as separate families: Atlantic–Congo, Mande, Dogon, Ijoid, Lafofa, Katla-Tima, Heiban, Talodi, and Rashad. Babaev (2013) stated: "The truth here is that almost no attempts in fact have been made to verify Greenberg's Niger–Congo hypothesis. This might seem strange but

5076-498: 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

5170-578: The expansion of Sahel agriculture in the African Neolithic period, following the desiccation of the Sahara in c. 3500 BCE . Similar classifications to Niger–Congo have been made ever since Diedrich Westermann in 1922. Joseph Greenberg continued that tradition, making it the starting point for modern linguistic classification in Africa, with some of his publications going to press starting in

5264-405: The first of the many languages still spoken in that region to have been spoken in the region. The evidence is insufficient to determine if this outlier group of Niger–Congo language speakers represents a prehistoric range of a Niger–Congo linguistic region that has since contracted as other languages have intruded, or if instead, this represents a group of Niger–Congo language speakers who migrated to

5358-422: The flooding. The disaster disrupted many communities across Nigeria’s 36 states, with hundreds of villages and urban centers submerged in water. The disaster unsettled over 2.4 million people and over 600 fatalities were recorded. Additionally, "expansive hectares of farmlands across affected states were swept off." The worst hit were mostly residents of agrarian communities near major tributaries in seven of

5452-426: The hypothesis that the original vowel inventory of Niger–Congo was a full ten-vowel system. On the other hand, Stewart, in recent comparative work, reconstructs a seven-vowel system for his proto-Potou-Akanic-Bantu. Several scholars have documented a contrast between oral and nasal vowels in Niger–Congo. In his reconstruction of proto-Volta–Congo, Steward (1976) postulates that nasal consonants have originated under

5546-409: The inclusion or exclusion of specific languages or language groups." Good (2020) stated: "First proposed by Greenberg (1949), Niger–Congo (NC) has for decades been treated as one of the four major phyla of African languages . The term, as presently used, however, is not without its difficulties. On the one hand, it is employed as a referential label for a group of over 1,500 languages, putting it among

5640-572: The indigenous Pygmy and Bushmen ( Khoisan ) populations there. The following is an overview of the language groups usually included in Niger–Congo. The genetic relationship of some branches is not universally accepted, and the cladistic connection between those who are accepted as related may also be unclear. The core phylum of the Niger–Congo group are the Atlantic–Congo languages. The non-Atlantic–Congo languages within Niger–Congo are grouped as Dogon , Mande , Ijo (sometimes with Defaka as Ijoid ), Katla , and Rashad . Atlantic–Congo combines

5734-429: The influence of nasal vowels; this hypothesis is supported by the fact that there are several Niger–Congo languages that have been analysed as lacking nasal consonants altogether. Languages like this have nasal vowels accompanied with complementary distribution between oral and nasal consonants before oral and nasal vowels. Subsequent loss of the nasal/oral contrast in vowels may result in nasal consonants becoming part of

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5828-453: The language groups traditionally classified as Atlantic." The coherence of Niger–Congo as a language phylum is supported by Grollemund, et al. (2016), using computational phylogenetic methods. The East/West Volta–Congo division, West/East Benue–Congo division, and North/South Bantoid division are not supported, whereas a Bantoid group consisting of Ekoid, Bendi, Dakoid, Jukunoid, Tivoid, Mambiloid, Beboid, Mamfe, Tikar, Grassfields, and Bantu

5922-620: The languages are spoken by a very small number of people, for example the Kabwa language 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

6016-459: The languages in which reduplication has the opposite meaning. It usually denotes short durations, or lower intensity of the action, and also means a few repetitions or a little bit more. The following is a list of nominal classes in Bantu languages: Benue River Benue River ( French : la Bénoué ), previously known as the Chadda River or Tchadda , is a major tributary of

6110-426: 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

6204-445: 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),

6298-631: The largest commonly cited language groups in the world. On the other hand, the term is also intended to embody a hypothesis of genealogical relationship between the referential NC languages that has not been proven." The lexicon of Proto–Niger–Congo (or Proto-Atlantic–Congo) has not been comprehensively reconstructed, although Konstantin Pozdniakov reconstructed the numeral system of Proto–Niger–Congo in 2018. The most extensive reconstructions of lower-order Niger–Congo branches include several reconstructions of Proto-Bantu , which has consequently had

6392-429: The latter as languages which had not yet completely evolved to full Bantu status, whereas others regarded them as languages which had partly lost original features still found in Bantu. The Bantuist Meinhof made a major distinction between Bantu and a 'Semi-Bantu' group which according to him was originally of the unrelated Sudanic stock. Westermann , a pupil of Meinhof, set out to establish the internal classification of

6486-415: The more popular systems. The majority of languages with [ATR] controlled vowel harmony have either seven or nine vowel phonemes, with the most common non-participatory vowel being /a/. It has been asserted that this is because vowel quality differences in the mid-central region where /ə/, the counterpart of /a/, is found, are difficult to perceive. Another possible reason for the non-participatory status of /a/

6580-493: 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

6674-414: 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

6768-447: The path laid by Joseph Greenberg to Proto–Niger–Congo was not followed by much research. Most scholars have focused on individual families or groups, and classifications as well as reconstructions were made on lower levels. Compared with the volume of literature on Atlantic or Mande languages, the list of papers considering the aspects of Niger–Congo reconstruction per se is quite scarce." Oxford Handbooks Online (2016) has indicated that

6862-484: The phoneme inventory. In all cases reported to date, the bilabial /m/ is the first nasal consonant to be phonologized. Niger–Congo thus invalidates two common assumptions about nasals: that all languages have at least one primary nasal consonant, and that if a language has only one primary nasal consonant it is /n/. Bantu languages The Bantu languages (English: UK : / ˌ b æ n ˈ t uː / , US : / ˈ b æ n t uː / Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are

6956-407: 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

7050-496: 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

7144-464: 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,

7238-405: The root to which they attach. The following examples of these suffixes alternate depending on the root. Furthermore, the directionality of assimilation in [ATR] root-controlled vowel harmony need not be specified. The root features [+ATR] and [−ATR] spread left and/or right as needed, so that no vowel would lack a specification and be ill-formed. Unlike in the root-controlled harmony system, where

7332-458: The roots because there is no determiner within a normal root that causes the [ATR] value. There are two types of [ATR] vowel harmony controllers in Niger–Congo. The first controller is the root. When a root contains a [+ATR] or [−ATR] vowel, then that value is applied to the rest of the word, which involves crossing morpheme boundaries. For example, suffixes in Wolof assimilate to the [ATR] value of

7426-465: The runoff of both rivers decreased markedly due to irrigation . Benue State has a tropical savanna climate . It is warm every month of the year throughout both wet and dry seasons. The annual temperature is 34°C and there is about 244 inch of rain in a year. The state has an average humidity of 61%, dew point of 25 °C, an UV-index of 7 and it is mainly dry for 169 days in a year. Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), conducted

7520-410: 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

7614-546: 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

7708-403: The then Sudanic languages . In a 1911 work he established a basic division between 'East' and 'West'. A historical reconstruction of West Sudanic was published in 1927, and in his 1935 'Charakter und Einteilung der Sudansprachen' he conclusively established the relationship between Bantu and West Sudanic. Joseph Greenberg took Westermann's work as a starting-point for his own classification. In

7802-469: The total number of speakers is Swahili , which is used as a lingua franca in parts of eastern and southeastern Africa . While the ultimate genetic unity of the core of Niger–Congo (called Atlantic–Congo ) is widely accepted, the internal cladistic structure is not well established. Other primary branches may include Mande , Dogon , Ijaw , Katla and Rashad . The connection of the Mande languages especially has never been demonstrated, and without them,

7896-402: The two [ATR] values behave symmetrically, a large number of Niger–Congo languages exhibit a pattern where the [+ATR] value is more active or dominant than the [−ATR] value. This results in the second vowel harmony controller being the [+ATR] value. If there is even one vowel that is [+ATR] in the whole word, then the rest of the vowels harmonize with that feature. However, if there is no vowel that

7990-475: The two largest languages of Nigeria , Yoruba , and Igbo . Benue–Congo includes the Southern Bantoid group, which is dominated by the Bantu languages , which account for 350 million people (2015), or half the total Niger–Congo speaking population. The strict genetic unity of any of these subgroups may themselves be under dispute. For example, Roger Blench (2012) argued that Adamawa , Ubangian , Kwa , Bantoid , and Bantu are not coherent groups. Although

8084-453: 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

8178-492: The upper Senegal and Niger river basins, south and west of Timbuktu ( Mande , Dogon ), the Niger Delta ( Ijoid ), and far to the east in south-central Sudan, around the Nuba Mountains (the Kordofanian families). They account for a total population of about 100 million (2015), mostly Mandé and Ijaw . The various Kordofanian languages are spoken in south-central Sudan, around the Nuba Mountains . "Kordofanian"

8272-511: The validity of Niger–Congo family as a whole (as opposed to Atlantic–Congo or a similar subfamily) has not been established. One of the most distinctive characteristics common to Atlantic–Congo languages is the use of a noun-class system, which is essentially a gender system with multiple genders. The language family most likely originated in or near the area where these languages were spoken prior to Bantu expansion (i.e. West Africa or Central Africa). Its expansion may have been associated with

8366-406: 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

8460-438: The years, several linguists have suggested a link between Niger–Congo and Nilo-Saharan , probably starting with Westermann's comparative work on the " Sudanic " family in which ' Eastern Sudanic ' (now classified as Nilo-Saharan) and ' Western Sudanic ' (now classified as Niger–Congo) were united. Gregersen (1972) proposed that Niger–Congo and Nilo-Saharan be united into a larger phylum, which he termed Kongo-Saharan . His evidence

8554-557: 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

8648-471: Was mainly based on the uncertainty in the classification of Songhay , morphological resemblances, and lexical similarities. A more recent proponent was Roger Blench (1995), who puts forward phonological, morphological and lexical evidence for uniting Niger–Congo and Nilo-Saharan in a Niger–Saharan phylum, with special affinity between Niger–Congo and Central Sudanic . However, fifteen years later his views had changed, with Blench (2011) proposing instead that

8742-425: Was only gradually recognized as a linguistic unit. In early classifications of the languages of Africa , one of the principal criteria used to distinguish different groupings was the languages' use of prefixes to classify nouns, or the lack thereof. A major advance came with the work of Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle , who in his 1854 Polyglotta Africana attempted a careful classification, the groupings of which in quite

8836-405: Was presented as one of several primary branches rather than being coordinate to the family as a whole, prompting re-introduction of the term Niger–Congo , which is in current use among linguists. Many classifications continue to place Kordofanian as the most distant branch, but mainly due to negative evidence (fewer lexical correspondences), rather than positive evidence that the other languages form

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