NIGER-CONGO LANGUAGES

Distribution of the Niger-Congo languages. a family of languages of Africa, which in terms of the number of languages spoken, their geographic extent, and the number of speakers is by far the largest language family in Africa. The area in which these languages are spoken stretches from Dakar, Senegal, at the westernmost tip of the continent, east to Mombasa in Kenya and south to Cape Town, South Africa. Excluding northern Africa (Mauritania to Egypt and The Sudan) and the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia to Somalia), some 85 percent of the population of Africaat least 600 million peoplespeak a Niger-Congo language. In two countries, Niger and Chad, Niger-Congo languages are spoken by a minority. In northern Nigeria, northern Uganda, and Kenya there are substantial populations speaking other languages, but even in these countries the majority of the population speaks a Niger-Congo language. The latest estimation of the number of Niger-Congo languages is about 1,400. All of these are considered to be distinct languages and not simply dialects. The named dialects of these languages number many thousands more, not to mention the variant names for those languages and dialects. For example, Swahili alone has 17 separate dialects and 15 additional variant names for some of the dialects. With such a huge language family spread so widely across a vast continent, the question naturally arises: If these languages are genetically related, where was their original homeland? What light do the relationships that are evident in the languages today and the current geographic location of these languages shed on the history of the peoples of Africa? One of the leading 20th-century scholars of Niger-Congo languages, Kay Williamson, argues on the basis of the principle of least moves that for the Benue-Congo languages (which account for half of the Niger-Congo family) there is evidence pointing to an original homeland in the area of the confluence of the Niger and Benue rivers. Over many centuries, the peoples of the Benue-Congo group spread out mostly south and east. Beyond Williamson's rather convincing hypothesis and broadening the discussion to all the other branches of Niger-Congo, there is no consensus among scholars as to the origins and historical development of Niger-Congo languages. Additional reading General works on African languages The most authoritative and up-to-date overview of languages and language-related topics in Africa is Thomas A. Sebeok, Current Trends in Linguistics, vol. 7, Linguistics in Sub-Saharan Africa (1971). In addition to chapters on the principal language families in Africa and their branches, this volume contains valuable studies on a dozen topics such as pidgins and creoles, orthographic systems, and language standardization, as well as a checklist of African languages and dialect names. Joseph H. Greenberg, The Languages of Africa, 3rd ed. (1970), is the culmination of a series of Greenberg's earlier works, and most contemporary scholarly research builds on this classification.Pioneering works of historical significance include Friedrich Mller, Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft, 4 vol. in 10 parts (187688), which contains one of the earliest attempts at an overall classification of African languages; R. Lepsius, Nubische Grammatik: mit einer Einleitung ber die Vlker und Sprachen Afrika's (1880, reprinted 1981), which includes a grammar of Nubian and an introduction containing an early overall classification of African languages; and Carl Meinhof, Introduction to the Phonology of the Bantu Languages (1932, reissued 1984; originally published in German, 1899). The work of Diedrich Westermann remains of interest because of its groundbreaking recognition of the distinction between Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan languages and also the similarities between languages in western and southern Africa. Diedrich Westermann, Die Sudansprachen: eine sprachvergleichende Studie (1911), his first publication, shows the interrelationships of five West African and three East African languages. A later work, Diedrich Westermann and Hermann Baumann, Die westlichen Sudansprachen und ihre Beziehungen zu Bantu (1927), demonstrates that there is a closer relationship between the West Sudanic and Bantu languages. Finally, Diedrich Westermann, Charakter und Einteilung der Sudansprachen, Africa, 8:129148 (April 1935), revises the author's earlier views on the Sudanic languages.Volumes in the series Handbook of African Languages, originally published by the International African Institute, give facts about a considerable number of African languages and include Clement M. Doke, Bantu: Modern Grammatical, Phonetical, and Lexicographical Studies Since 1860 (1945, reprinted 1967), and The Southern Bantu Languages (1954, reprinted 1967); Malcolm Guthrie, The Classification of the Bantu Languages (1948, reprinted 1967), and The Bantu Languages of Western Equatorial Africa (1953); Diedrich Westermann and M.A. Bryan, The Languages of West Africa, new ed. with a supplementary bibliography compiled by D.W. Arnott (1970); and Archibald N. Tucker and M.A. Bryan, The Non-Bantu Languages of North-Eastern Africa (1956). Linguistic sketches of the languages included in the Tucker/Bryan volume are found in Archibald N. Tucker and M.A. Bryan, Linguistic Analysis: The Non-Bantu Languages of North-Eastern Africa (1966). Niger-Congo languages The most comprehensive and authoritative description of Niger-Congo languages is John Bendor-Samuel and Rhonda L. Hartell (eds.), The Niger-Congo Languages (1989); for each of the nine primary branches of Niger-CongoMande, Kordofanian, Atlantic, Ijoid, Kru, Gur, Adamawa-Ubangi, Kwa, and Benue-Congothere is a historical introduction building on the information in the Current Trends in Linguistics volume cited above. Substantial information on features of many Niger-Congo languages is given in the series Handbook of African Languages, also cited above. The most important study of Bantu is Malcolm Guthrie, Comparative Bantu: An Introduction to the Comparative Linguistics and Prehistory of the Bantu Languages, 4 vol. (196771). Later studies include Thomas J. Hinnebusch, Derek Nurse, and Martin Mould, Studies in the Classification of Eastern Bantu Languages (1981); E.N. Myachina (E.N. Miachina), The Swahili Language (1981; originally published in Russian, 1960), a descriptive grammar; and Derek Nurse and Thomas Spear, The Swahili: Reconstructing the History and Language of an African Society, 8001500 (1985).The following periodicals are devoted entirely to articles on African languages, of which the overwhelming majority are concerned with Niger-Congo: African Studies (semiannual, now defunct); The Journal of West African Languages (semiannual); Afrika und bersee (irregular); Studies in African Linguistics (quarterly); African Language Studies (196080); African Languages: Langues Africaines (irregular); and Journal of African Languages and Linguistics (semiannual). A number of significant articles also appear in the Sierra Leone Language Review, vol. 15 (196266), which merged with the Journal of African Languages, vol. 111 (196272) to form African Language Review, vol. 69 (196770/71); a further volume in the series, called volume 1, was published in the periodical titled simply African Languages (1975 ). African Languages and Cultures (semiannual) also has a substantial number of articles on African languages. John T. Bendor-Samuel