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Atlantic–Congo Languages
The Atlantic–Congo languages make up 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. Hans Gunther Mukanovsky's "Western Nigritic" corresponded roughly to modern Atlantic–Congo. In the infobox, the languages which appear to be the most divergent are placed at the top. The Atlantic branch is defined in the narrow sense (as Senegambian), 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. ''Glottolog'', based primarily on Güldemann (2018), has a more limi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surface area.Sayre, April Pulley (1999), ''Africa'', Twenty-First Century Books. . With nearly billion people as of , it accounts for about of the world's human population. Demographics of Africa, Africa's population is the youngest among all the continents; the median age in 2012 was 19.7, when the worldwide median age was 30.4. Based on 2024 projections, Africa's population will exceed 3.8 billion people by 2100. Africa is the least wealthy inhabited continent per capita and second-least wealthy by total wealth, ahead of Oceania. Scholars have attributed this to different factors including Geography of Africa, geography, Climate of Africa, climate, corruption, Scramble for Africa, colonialism, the Cold War, and neocolonialism. Despite this lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Katloid Languages
The Katla languages are two to three closely related languages that form a small language family in the Nuba Hills of Sudan. Part of an erstwhile Kordofanian proposal, they are of uncertain position within the hypothetical Niger–Congo family. They do not share the characteristic morphology of Niger–Congo, such as the noun-class system. Thus Roger Blench Roger Marsh Blench (born August 1, 1953) is a British linguist, ethnomusicologist and development anthropologist. He has an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and is based in Cambridge, England. He researches, publishes, and work ... classifies them as a divergent branch of Niger–Congo outside the Atlantic–Congo core. A similar situation holds for another Kordofanian family, Rashad; these are not closely related to Katla. See also * List of Proto-Katloid reconstructions (Wiktionary) References * Roger Blench. UnpublishedKordofanian and Niger–Congo: new and revised lexical evidence * Roger Ble ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-language
In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unattested, or partially attested at best. They are reconstructed by way of the comparative method. In the family tree metaphor, a proto-language can be called a mother language. Occasionally, the German term ' (; from 'primordial', 'original' + 'language') is used instead. It is also sometimes called the ''common'' or ''primitive'' form of a language (e.g. Common Germanic, Primitive Norse). In the strict sense, a proto-language is the most recent common ancestor of a language family, immediately before the family started to diverge into the attested ''daughter languages''. It is therefore equivalent with the ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'' of a language family. Moreover, a group of lects that are not considered separate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bung Language
The Bung language is a nearly extinct, endangered language of Cameroon Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in Central Africa. It shares boundaries with Nigeria to the west and north, Chad to the northeast, the Central African Republic to the east, and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the R ... spoken by three people (in 1995) at the village of Boung on the Adamawa Plateau.Bruce Connell, 1997: Moribund Languages of the Nigeria-Cameroon Borderland It is remembered best by one speaker who learned the language at a young age, though it is not his mother tongue. A wordlist shows its strongest resemblance to be with the Ndung dialect of Mambilo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bayot Language
Bayot is a language of southern Senegal, southwest of Ziguinchor in a group of villages near Nyassia, and in northwestern Guinea-Bissau, along the Senegalese border, and in the Gambia The Gambia, officially the Republic of The Gambia, is a country in West Africa. Geographically, The Gambia is the List of African countries by area, smallest country in continental Africa; it is surrounded by Senegal on all sides except for .... The Kugere and Kuxinge (Essin) dialects of Senegal and the Arame (Edamme) and Gubaare dialects of Guinea-Bissau are distinct enough to be sometimes considered different languages. Bayot is the most divergent of the Jola languages, in the Senegambian branch of the Niger–Congo language family. Bayot is grammatically Jola, apart from a non-Jola pronominal system. However, perhaps half its vocabulary is non-Jola and even non-Atlantic. It may therefore be a language isolate with substantial Jola borrowing ( relexification). In any case, Bayot i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aproumu Aizi
Apro, also known as Aproumu, is a language spoken by the Aizi people of Ébrié Lagoon in Ivory Coast. Once assumed to be a Kru language like the other two Aizi languages The Aizi (Aïzi, Ahizi, Ezibo) speak three languages around Ébrié Lagoon in Ivory Coast. Two of the languages are Kru. They are divergent enough for intelligibility to be difficult: * Lélé ''(Lélémrin),'' also known as Tiagba ''(Tiagbamr ..., subsequent investigation concluded it was Kwa and then that it was unclassified within Volta–Congo Phonology Consonants The consonants of the Aproumu language are located in the chart below. Vowels References Languages of Ivory Coast Lagoon languages {{lagoon-lang-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mprε Language
Mprε or Mpra is an extinct language spoken in the village of Butei () in central Ghana, located between the towns of Techiman and Tamale near the confluence of the Black and White Voltas. Mprε has been difficult to classify due to its divergent vocabulary. It is known only from a 70-word list given in a 1931 article. Blench (2007) considers it to be a possible language isolate. A poorly attested language spoken in the nearby village of Tuluwe, Mpur, may also turn out to be yet another language isolate. Both Butie and Tuluwe are located near the village of Mpaha. Painter (1967) briefly states that " has died" and that the ethnic group ("the Nnyamase-mprɛ") have "become Nnyamase-Gonja"; he appears to regard it as having been a dialect of Gonja. However, this is based only on the numerals, which are clearly related to Gonja. The rest of the vocabulary is "hard to recognise" (Williamson & Blench, 2000:36). Blench (2010) presents it as a possible Kwa language The Kwa langua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pεrε Language
Pεrε or Mbre is a moribund language of the Ivory Coast. It is known as ''Pεrε'' [also rendered ''Prε''] by its speakers and as ''Bεrε'' [also rendered ''Brε''] by the locally dominant Koro language (Mande), Koro people. Pεrε was first described in an unpublished manuscript by Denis Creissels. A grammar, dictionary and texts have been published by Jeffrey Heath (linguist), Jeffrey Heath and Brahima Tioté. Sociolinguistic situation Pεrε is spoken in the village of Bondosso – and marginally in Niantibo – not far from the city of Bouaké, Ivory Coast. Until recently it was also spoken in the village of Kouakoudougou. The speakers are a ''Blacksmiths of western Africa, numu'' (blacksmith) caste among the Mande. It had 30 active speakers in 2019 out of an ethnic population that was 700 in the year 2000. Speakers are shifting to the neighbouring Manding languages, Manding language Koro language (Mande), Koro, and the language has large numbers of Manding loanwords. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
West Atlantic Languages
The West Atlantic languages (also the Atlantic languages"West Atlantic" is the traditional term, following Diedrich Hermann Westermann; "Atlantic" is more typical in recent work, particularly since Bendor-Samuel (1989), but is also used specifically for the northern branch of West Atlantic. or North Atlantic languages) of West Africa are a major subgroup of the Niger–Congo languages. The Atlantic languages are spoken along the Atlantic coast from Senegal to Liberia, though transhumant Fula speakers have spread eastward and are found in large numbers across the Sahel, from Senegal to Nigeria, Cameroon and Sudan. Wolof of Senegal and several of the Fula languages are the most populous Atlantic languages, with several million speakers each. Other significant members include Serer and the Jola dialect cluster of Senegal. Temne, a major language of Sierra Leone, was included in the Atlantic subgroup in earlier classifications but in modern proposals, it is no longer grouped with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Senufo Languages
The Senufo or Senufic languages () comprise around 15 languages spoken by the Senufo people, Senufo in the north of Ivory Coast, the south of Mali and the southwest of Burkina Faso. An isolated language, Nafaanra language, Nafaanra, is also spoken in the west of Ghana. The Senufo languages constitute their own branch of the Atlantic–Congo sub-family of the Niger–Congo languages. Anne Garber estimates the total number of Senufo people, Senufos at some 1.5 million; the Ethnologue, based on various population estimates, counts 2.7 million. The Senufo languages are bounded to the west by Mande languages, to the south by Kwa languages, and to the north and east by Central Gur languages. The Senufo languages are like the Gur languages in that they have a suffixal noun class system and that verbs are marked for aspect. Most Gur languages to the north of Senufo have a two tone downstep system, but the tonal system of the Senufo languages is mostly analysed as a three level tone sys ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atlantic Languages
The West Atlantic languages (also the Atlantic languages"West Atlantic" is the traditional term, following Diedrich Hermann Westermann; "Atlantic" is more typical in recent work, particularly since Bendor-Samuel (1989), but is also used specifically for the northern branch of West Atlantic. or North Atlantic languages) of West Africa are a major subgroup of the Niger–Congo languages. The Atlantic languages are spoken along the Atlantic coast from Senegal to Liberia, though transhumant Fula speakers have spread eastward and are found in large numbers across the Sahel, from Senegal to Nigeria, Cameroon and Sudan. Wolof of Senegal and several of the Fula languages are the most populous Atlantic languages, with several million speakers each. Other significant members include Serer and the Jola dialect cluster of Senegal. Temne, a major language of Sierra Leone, was included in the Atlantic subgroup in earlier classifications but in modern proposals, it is no longer grouped wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
