AFRICAN LANGUAGES

languages indigenous to Africa that belong to the Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, Khoisan, and Afro-Asiatic language families. The number of African languages has been estimated to be from 800 to more than 1,000. Important sub-Saharan languages include Fulani, Yoruba, Igbo, and Zulu of the Niger-Congo family; Kunama, Shilluk, Dinka, and Nuer of the Nilo-Saharan family; and Galla, Somali, and Hausa of the Afro-Asiatic languages. Lingua francas that incorporate Arabic and European loanwords include Swahili, Lingala, Fanagalo, and Sango. The linguistically most homogeneous area of Africa is the northern part, in which Arabic predominates from Egypt to Mauritania, albeit in a number of sharply distinguished dialects; the most important dialect cleavage is between the Egyptian-Sudanese varieties and those of the Maghrib (from Libya westward). Intermingled with the Maghrib dialects are the Berber languages, concentrated principally in Algeria and Morocco. They range as far east as the Siwa Oasis in western Egypt, as far west as the Senegalese-Mauritanian border area, and as far south as the southern rim of the Sahara. The nomadic Tuaregs speak a Berber language. Nubian, a totally different language, is spoken as far north as southern Egypt along the Nile, but its links are clearly with the languages of sub-Saharan Africa. In sub-Saharan Africa the linguistic picture is far more complex. Except for the Khoisan (Bushman and Hottentot) languages of the extreme south, approximately the entire southern third of Africa is occupied by the relatively closely interrelated Bantu languages. They extend eastward from roughly the Nigerian-Cameroon border to the Indian Ocean. Bantu and non-Bantu languages are considerably interspersed around the northern Bantu border, running through Cameroon, slightly south of the northern boundary of Congo (Kinshasa), and through Uganda and Kenya. There are Bantu enclaves as far north as Somalia and non-Bantu enclaves in northern Tanzania. It is the area north of the Bantu and south of the Sahara that is linguistically the most diverse; there the languages are most numerous and their interrelationships most remote and difficult to establish with certainty.