![]() 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 the area at some point in prehistory where they were an isolated linguistic community from the beginning. ![]() The current prevailing linguistic view is that Kordofanian languages are part of the Niger-Congo language family and that these may be the first of the many languages still spoken in that region to have been spoken in the region. No definitive " Proto-Niger-Congo" lexicon or grammar has been developed for the language family as a whole.Īn important unresolved issue in determining the time and place where the Niger–Congo languages originated and their range prior to recorded history 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. 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. Joseph Greenberg continued that tradition, making it the starting point for modern linguistic classification in Africa, with some of his most notable publications going to press starting in the 1960s. Similar classifications to Niger-Congo have been made ever since Diedrich Westermann in 1922. Īccording to Roger Blench (2004), all specialists in Niger–Congo languages believe the languages to have a common origin, rather than merely constituting a typological classification, for reasons including their shared noun-class system, shared verbal extensions and shared basic lexicon. Its expansion may have been associated with the expansion of Sahel agriculture in the African Neolithic period, following the desiccation of the Sahara in c. The language family most likely originated in or near the area where these languages were spoken prior to Bantu expansion (i.e. įurther information: Linguistic homeland § Niger–Congo, Sub-Saharan Africa § Genetic history, Congoid, and Bantu expansion 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 connection of the Mande languages especially has never been demonstrated, and without them, the validity of Niger-Congo family as a whole (as opposed to Atlantic-Congo or a similar subfamily) has not been established. Other primary branches may include Dogon, Mande, Ijo, Katla and Rashad. 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. The most widely spoken by the total number of speakers is Swahili, which is used as a lingua franca in parts of eastern and southeastern Africa. The most widely spoken Niger–Congo languages by number of native speakers are Yoruba, Igbo, Fula, Shona, Sesotho, Zulu, Akan, and Mooré. Within Niger-Congo, the Bantu languages alone account for 350 million people (2015), or half the total Niger-Congo speaking population. If valid, it would be the third-largest language family in the world by number of native speakers, comprising around 700 million people as of 2015. It is generally considered to be the world's largest language family in terms of the number of distinct languages, just ahead of Austronesian, although this is complicated by the ambiguity about what constitutes a distinct language the number of named Niger–Congo languages listed by Ethnologue is 1,540. If valid, Niger-Congo would be the world's largest in terms of member languages, the third-largest in terms of speakers, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area. It unites the Mande languages, the Atlantic-Congo languages (which share a characteristic noun class system), and possibly several smaller groups of languages that are difficult to classify. ![]() Niger-Congo is a hypothetical language family spoken over the majority of sub-Saharan Africa. Map showing the distribution of major Niger–Congo languages.
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