Nilo-Saharan languagesThe Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed linguistic family consisting of around 210 Native African languages spoken by somewhere around 70 million speakers, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of the Nile meet.
Niger–Congo languagesNiger–Congo is a proposed family of African languages spoken over the majority of sub-Saharan Africa. It unites the Mande languages, the Atlantic–Congo languages (which share a characteristic noun class system), and possibly several smaller groups of languages that are difficult to classify.
Diedrich Hermann WestermannDiedrich Hermann Westermann (24 June 1875 – 31 May 1956) was a German missionary, Africanist, and linguist. He substantially extended and revised the work of Carl Meinhof, his teacher, although he rejected some of Meinhof's theories only implicitly. Westermann is seen as one of the founders of modern African linguistics. He carried out extensive linguistic and anthropological research in the area ranging from Senegal eastwards to the Upper Nile.
Bantu languagesLarge language family spoken in Sub-Saharan AfricaThe Bantu languages (UK: , US: Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a language family, or a branch of the proposed Niger-Congo language family, containing about 600 languages that are spoken by the Bantu peoples of Central, Southern, Eastern and SoutheastAfrica. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages.
Carl MeinhofCarl Friedrich Michael Meinhof (23 July 1857 – 11 February 1944) was a German linguist and one of the first linguists to study African languages. Early years and careerMeinhof was born in Barzwitz near Rügenwalde in the Province of Pomerania, Kingdom of Prussia. He studied at the University of Tübingen and at the University of Greifswald. In 1905 he became professor at the in Berlin. On 5 May 1933 he became a member of the Nazi Party.
Noun classIn linguistics, a noun class is a particular category of nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of the characteristic features of its referent, such as gender, animacy, shape, but such designations are often clearly conventional. Some authors use the term "grammatical gender" as a synonym of "noun class", but others consider these different concepts. Noun classes should not be confused with noun classifiers.
Linguistic typologyLinguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the common properties of the world's languages.
Afroasiatic languagesLarge language family of Africa and West AsiaThe Afroasiatic languages (also known as the Afro-Asiatic, Afrasian, Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic languages) are a language family (or phylum) of about 400 languages spoken predominantly in West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahara and Sahel.
Languages of AfricaThe number of languages natively spoken in Africa is variously estimated (depending on the delineation of language vs. dialect) at between 1,250 and 2,100, and by some counts at over 3,000. Nigeria alone has over 500 languages (according to SIL Ethnologue), one of the greatest concentrations of linguistic diversity in the world.
SenegalSenegal, officially the Republic of Senegal, is the westernmost country of mainland West Africa, situated along the Atlantic Ocean coast. It borders Mauritania to the north, Mali to the east, Guinea to the southeast and Guinea-Bissau to the southwest. Senegal nearly surrounds the Gambia, a country occupying a narrow strip of land along the banks of the Gambia River, which separates Senegal's southern region of Casamance from the rest of the country.
SahelThe Sahel region (; from Arabic ساحلsāḥil, "coast, shore"), or Sahelian acacia savanna, is a biogeographical region in Africa. It is the transition zone between the more humid Sudanian savannas to its south and the drier Sahara to the north. The Sahel has a hot semi-arid climate and stretches across the southernmost latitudes of North Africa between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea.
San peoplesThe San peoples (also Saan), or Bushmen, are the members of any of the indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures of southern Africa, and the oldest surviving cultures of the region. Some interpretations of the genetic analysis suggest divergence from other humans as early as 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. Their recent ancestral territories span Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and South Africa.*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.