The Kimbundu languages are a group of
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 t ...
coded Zone H.20 in Guthrie's classification. According to Nurse & Philippson (2003),
they probably form a valid node, though this is still uncertain. They are:
:
Kimbundu
Kimbundu, a Bantu language which has sometimes been called Mbundu
or 'North Mbundu' (see Umbundu), is the second-most-widely-spoken Bantu language in Angola.
Its speakers are concentrated in the north-west of the country, notably in the Lua ...
(Mbundu),
Sama,
Bolo,
Mpinda
Soyo (formerly known as ''Santo António do Zaire'') is a city, with a population of 200,920 (2014 census), and a municipality, with a population of 227,175 (2014 census), located in the province of Zaire in Angola, at the mouth of the Congo riv ...
.
Songo is often assumed to be a dialect of Kimbundu, but actually appears to be one of the
Teke languages
The Teke languages are a group of Bantu languages spoken by the Teke people in the western Congo and in Gabon. They are coded Zone B.70 in Guthrie's classification. According to Nurse & Philippson (2003), the Teke languages apart from West Teke ...
.
Ngoya to its south was until recently considered a dialect of Kimbundu, but has now been recognized as a language in own right, and may be transitional between Kimbundu and Umbundu.
[Angenot et al. (2013]
"Comparison between the Ipala-Ngoya, Kimbundu and Umbundu tone-class systems"
''Revista Língua Viva'' vol. 3, no. 1.
Footnotes
References
{{Bantu-lang-stub