formerly Adamawa-Eastern languages
Branch of the huge Niger-Congo language family .
Adamawa-Ubangi languages are spoken in eastern Nigeria, northern Cameroon, southwestern Chad, and western Central African Republic. The branch has two divisions, Adamawa in the west and Ubangi in the east. The Adamawa group comprises 80 languages, the least-studied languages in the Niger-Congo family. Nearly all have fewer than 100,000 speakers. The Ubangi group includes 40 languages and extends across a much broader region, from northern Cameroon across the Central Africa Republic to adjacent parts of southern Sudan and northern Congo (Kinshasa). Ubangi languages with more than a million speakers include those of the Banda, Gbaya, Ngbaka, and Zande peoples. Sango, a restructured form of one or more languages of the Ngbandi group of Ubangi, has become a lingua franca of the Central African Republic.