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Bwela Language
Bwela, or ''Lingi'', is a poorly known Congolese Bantu language of uncertain affiliation (though listed as Zone C.40 by Guthrie). It may be close to Tembo. References Bantu languages Languages of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Buja-Ngombe languages {{Bantu-lang-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Democratic Republic Of Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in Central Africa. It is bordered to the northwest by the Republic of the Congo, to the north by the Central African Republic, to the northeast by South Sudan, to the east by Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi, and by Tanzania (across Lake Tanganyika), to the south and southeast by Zambia, to the southwest by Angola, and to the west by the South Atlantic Ocean and the Cabinda exclave of Angola. By area, it is the second-largest country in Africa and the 11th-largest in the world. With a population of around 108 million, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the most populous officially Francophone country in the world. The national capital and largest city is Kinshasa, which is also the nation's economic center. Centered on the Congo Ba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atlantic–Congo Languages
The Atlantic–Congo languages are the largest demonstrated family of languages in Africa. They have characteristic noun class systems and form the core of the Niger–Congo family hypothesis. They comprise all of Niger–Congo apart from Mande, Dogon, Ijoid, Siamou, Kru, the Katla and Rashad languages (previously classified as Kordofanian), and perhaps some or all of the Ubangian languages. Mukarovsky's West-Nigritic corresponded roughly to modern Atlantic–Congo. In the infobox, the languages which appear to be the most divergent are placed at the top.Roger BlenchNiger-Congo: an alternative view/ref> The Atlantic branch is defined in the narrow sense, while the former Atlantic branches Mel and the isolates Sua, Gola and Limba, are split out as primary branches; they are mentioned next to each other because there is no published evidence to move them; Volta–Congo is intact apart from Senufo and Kru. In addition, Güldemann (2018) lists Nalu and Rio Nunez as unclassi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benue–Congo Languages
Benue–Congo (sometimes called East Benue–Congo) is a major branch of the Volta-Congo languages which covers most of Sub-Saharan Africa. Subdivisions Central Nigerian (or Platoid) contains the Plateau, Jukunoid and Kainji families, and Bantoid–Cross combines the Bantoid and Cross River groups. Bantoid is only a collective term for every subfamily of Bantoid–Cross except Cross River, and this is no longer seen as forming a valid branch, however one of the subfamilies, Southern Bantoid, is still considered valid. It is Southern Bantoid which contains the Bantu languages, which are spoken across most of Sub-Saharan Africa. This makes Benue–Congo one of the largest subdivisions of the Niger–Congo language family, both in number of languages, of which '' Ethnologue'' counts 976 (2017), and in speakers, numbering perhaps 350 million. Benue–Congo also includes a few minor isolates in the Nigeria–Cameroon region, but their exact relationship is uncertain. The neighbouri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bantoid Languages
Bantoid is a major branch of the Benue–Congo language family. It consists of the Northern Bantoid languages and the Southern Bantoid languages, a division which also includes the Bantu languages that constitute the overwhelming majority and to which Bantoid is named after. History The term "Bantoid" was first used by Krause in 1895 for languages that showed resemblances in vocabulary to Bantu. Joseph Greenberg, in his 1963 ''The Languages of Africa'', defined Bantoid as the group to which Bantu belongs together with its closest relatives; this is the sense in which the term is still used today. However, according to Roger Blench, the Bantoid languages probably do not actually form a coherent group. Internal classification A proposal that divided Bantoid into North Bantoid and South Bantoid was introduced by Williamson. In this proposal, the Mambiloid and Dakoid languages (and later Tikar) are grouped together as North Bantoid, while everything else Bantoid is subsumed under ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bantu Languages
The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu people of Central, Southern, Eastern africa and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages. The total number of Bantu languages ranges in the hundreds, depending on the definition of "language" versus "dialect", and is estimated at between 440 and 680 distinct languages."Guthrie (1967-71) names some 440 Bantu 'varieties', Grimes (2000) has 501 (minus a few 'extinct' or 'almost extinct'), Bastin ''et al.'' (1999) have 542, Maho (this volume) has some 660, and Mann ''et al.'' (1987) have ''c.'' 680." Derek Nurse, 2006, "Bantu Languages", in the ''Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics'', p. 2:Ethnologue report for Southern Bantoid" lists a total of 535 languages. The count includes 13 Mbam languages, which are not always included under "Narrow Bantu". For Bantuic, Linguasphere has 260 outer languages (which are equivalent to languages ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buja–Ngombe Languages
The Buja–Ngombe languages are a group of Bantu languages reported to be a valid clade by Nurse & Philippson (2003). They are Buja (C.37), the Ngombe languages (C.41), and Tembo (C.46): : Budza– Tembo–Kunda–Gbuta–Babale, Ngombe (Doko), Bomboma, Bamwe, Dzando, Gendza, Kula Guthrie also lists two unclassified C.30 varieties, Doko and Londo (Bolondo). ''Ethnologue'' lists the first as a dialect of Ngombe, and says that the latter is most similar to Tembo, so both may belong here. '' Glottolog'' lists Bwela as closest to Tembo as well. Footnotes References * {{Bantu-lang-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bantu Language
The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu people of Central, Southern, Eastern africa and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages. The total number of Bantu languages ranges in the hundreds, depending on the definition of "language" versus "dialect", and is estimated at between 440 and 680 distinct languages."Guthrie (1967-71) names some 440 Bantu 'varieties', Grimes (2000) has 501 (minus a few 'extinct' or 'almost extinct'), Bastin ''et al.'' (1999) have 542, Maho (this volume) has some 660, and Mann ''et al.'' (1987) have ''c.'' 680." Derek Nurse, 2006, "Bantu Languages", in the ''Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics'', p. 2:Ethnologue report for Southern Bantoid" lists a total of 535 languages. The count includes 13 Mbam languages, which are not always included under "Narrow Bantu". For Bantuic, Linguasphere has 260 outer languages (which are equivalent to languages ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guthrie Classification Of Bantu Languages
The 250 or so "Narrow Bantu languages" are conventionally divided up into geographic zones first proposed by Malcolm Guthrie (1967–1971). These were assigned letters A–S and divided into decades (groups A10, A20, etc.); individual languages were assigned unit numbers (A11, A12, etc.), and dialects further subdivided (A11a, A11b, etc.). This coding system has become the standard for identifying Bantu languages; it was the only practical way to distinguish many ambiguously named languages before the introduction of ISO 639-3 coding, and it continues to be widely used. Only Guthrie's Zone S is (sometimes) considered to be a genealogical group. Since Guthrie's time a Zone J (made of languages formerly classified in groups D and E) has been set up as another possible genealogical group bordering the Great Lakes. The list is first summarized, with links to articles on accepted groups of Bantu languages (bold decade headings). Following that is the complete 1948 list, as updated ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Motembo Language
Budza or Buja (Embudja, Limbudza) is a Bantu language of the Democratic Republic of Congo. There are several neighbouring minor languages which Maho (2009) lists as closely related: C371 Tembo (''Motembo'' or ''Litembo'' – distinguish Kitembo), C372 Kunda (''Likunda'' – distinguish Chikunda Chikunda, sometimes rendered as Achicunda, was the name given from the 18th century onwards to the slave-warriors of the Afro-Portuguese estates known as Prazos in Zambezia, Mozambique. They were used to defend the prazos and police their inhabitan ...), C373 Gbuta (''Egbuta'') and C374 Babale. Only Litembo, with 5,000 speakers, has been assigned an ISO code; ''Glottolog'' treats it and Likunda as a single language. References Buja-Ngombe languages Languages of the Democratic Republic of the Congo {{DRCongo-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glottolog
''Glottolog'' is a bibliographic database of the world's lesser-known languages, developed and maintained first at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany (between 2015 and 2020 at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany). Its main curators include Harald Hammarström and Martin Haspelmath. Overview Sebastian Nordhoff and Harald Hammarström created the Glottolog/Langdoc project in 2011. The creation of ''Glottolog'' was partly motivated by the lack of a comprehensive language bibliography, especially in ''Ethnologue''. Glottolog provides a catalogue of the world's languages and language families and a bibliography on the world's less-spoken languages. It differs from the similar catalogue '' Ethnologue'' in several respects: * It tries to accept only those languages that the editors have been able to confirm both exist and are distinct. Varieties that have not been confirmed, but are inherited from anothe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Languages Of The Democratic Republic Of The Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a multilingual country where an estimated total of 242 languages are spoken. Ethnologue lists 215 living languages. The official language, inherited from the colonial period, is French. Four other languages, three of them indigenous, have the status of national language: Kikongo, Lingala, Swahili and Tshiluba. 51% of the total population speaks French and 74% are using French as a lingua franca. When the country was a Belgian colony, it had already instituted teaching and use of the four national languages in primary schools, making it one of the few African nations to have had literacy in local languages during the European colonial period. French remains the official language in the Congolese government and is spoken by half of the population. French French is the official language of the country since its colonial period under Belgian rule. Therefore, the variety of French used in the DRC has many similarities with Belgian Fre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
