The Nyali languages are a
clade
A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English term, ...
of
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 t ...
s coded Zone D.33 in
Guthrie's classification
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 ...
. They are:
:
Budu,
Ndaka,
Nyali
Nyali is a residential area and Sub-County within Mombasa City, located on the mainland north of Mombasa County. It is connected to Mombasa Island by the New Nyali Bridge.
Nyali is known for its many high-class hotels and residential houses, m ...
,
Vanuma,
Mbo
They might belong in with the
Mbole–Enya languages
The Mbole–Enya languages are a clade of Bantu languages coded Zone D.10 in Guthrie's classification. According to Nurse & Philippson (2003), apart possibly from Lengola the languages form a valid node. The other languages are:
: Enya–Zura, ...
, but the connection could be with Lengola, which constitutes the
Lebonya proposal (Nurse 2003).
The Nyali languages were treated as a
dialect cluster
A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varie ...
by Guthrie. ''Ethnologue'' notes that Mbo, Ndaka, Budu, Vanuma, and Nyali are quite close. However,
Beeke and
Ngbee are more distant; ''Ethnologue'' suggests Beeke is closer to
Bali
Bali () is a province of Indonesia and the westernmost of the Lesser Sunda Islands. East of Java and west of Lombok, the province includes the island of Bali and a few smaller neighbouring islands, notably Nusa Penida, Nusa Lembongan, and Nu ...
, and leaves extinct Ngbee unclassified within Bantu.
Footnotes
References
*
{{Bantu-lang-stub