Benue Congo languages

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The Benue Congo languages together with the Kwa languages ​​form the southern branch of the Volta Congo languages , a primary branch of the Niger Congo .

The approximately 900 Benue Congo languages ​​are spoken by over 270 million people in West, Central and South Africa. The Benue Congo is divided into two unequal genetic subunits , namely West Benue Congo (70 languages ​​with almost 50 million speakers in Togo , Benin and Nigeria ) and East Benue Congo (830 languages ​​with 225 million speakers in the southeast -Nigeria and all of Central and South Africa ). East Benue Congo in particular includes the large family of Bantu languages .

Development of the term

The name Benue Congo was coined by Joseph Greenberg in 1963, who divided this group into four units: Platoid, Jukunoid, Cross River and Bantoid. According to Shimizu (1975) and Gerhardt (in Bendor-Samuel 1989), Platoid and Jukunoid were combined as Central Nigerian . Bennett and Sterk (1977) extended Benue-Congo to include the eastern groups of Greenberg's Kwa , namely Yoruboid, Edoid, Igboid, Nupoid and Idomoid. These groups were then united by Blench in 1989 as West Benue Congo , while the original Greenberg Benue Congo became East Benue Congo . Ohiri-Aniche suspected in 1999 that the Ukaan language (perhaps together with the Akpes) forms a link between West and East Benue Congo, while Connell (1998) suggested the Cross River as such a link. In the present classification according to Williamson-Blench (in Heine-Nurse 2000), Cross River is included in the East Benue Congo, while Ukaan and Akpes (which may form a unit) are included in the West Benue Congo.

Classification of the Benue Congo

Geography of the Benue-Congo languages, Bantu area only touched on

Classification of the Benue-Congo according to Williamson-Blench 2000

The linguistic properties of the Benue Congo languages ​​are discussed in the articles West Benue Congo , Platoid Languages , Cross River and Bantoid Languages .

The main Benue Congo languages

The following table lists the Benue-Congo languages ​​with at least 3 million speakers, including their number of speakers (including second speakers), their abbreviated classification and their area of ​​distribution. There are a total of 26 Benue-Congo languages ​​with at least 3 million speakers, of which all except Yoruba , Igbo and Efik belong to the Bantu languages .

Benue Congo languages ​​with at least 3 million speakers

language Alternative
name
Number of speakers		 Classification Main distribution area
Swahili Kiswahili 30-40 million East Benue Congo, Bantu G40 Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, Mozambique
Yoruba Yariba 20-30 million West Benue Congo, Yoruboid Southwest Nigeria, Benin, Togo
Igbo Ibo 18 million West Benue Congo, Igboid Southeast Nigeria
Shona Chishona 11 million East Benue Congo, Bantu S10 Zimbabwe, Zambia
Zulu Isizulu 10 million East Benue Congo, Bantu S40 South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Malawi
Nyanja Chichewa 10 million East Benue Congo, Bantu N30 Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique
Lingála Ngala 9 million East Benue Congo, Bantu C40 Congo, Congo-Brazzaville
Rwanda Kinyarwanda 8 million East Benue Congo, Bantu J60 Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Congo
Xhosa Isixhosa 7.5 million East Benue Congo, Bantu S40 South Africa, Lesotho
Luba Kasai Chiluba 6.5 million East Benue Congo, Bantu L30 Congo
Gikuyu Kikuyu 5.5 million East Benue Congo, Bantu E20 Kenya
Kituba Kutuba 5 million East Benue Congo, Bantu H10 Kongo, Kongo-Brazzaville ( Congo-based Creole language )
Ganda Luganda 5 million East Benue Congo, Bantu J10 Uganda
Rundi Kirundi 5 million East Benue Congo, Bantu J60 Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda
Makhuwa Makua 5 million East Benue Congo, Bantu P30 Mozambique
Sotho Sesotho 5 million East Benue Congo, Bantu S30 Lesotho, South Africa
Tswana Setswana 5 million East Benue Congo, Bantu S30 Botswana, South Africa
Mbundu Umbundu 4 million East Benue Congo, Bantu R10 Angola (Benguela)
Pedi Sepedi, North Sotho 4 million East Benue Congo, Bantu S30 South Africa, Botswana
Luyia Luluyia 3.6 million East Benue Congo, Bantu J30 Kenya
Bemba Chibemba 3.6 million East Benue Congo, Bantu M40 Zambia, Congo
Tsonga Xitsonga 3.3 million East Benue Congo, Bantu S50 South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe
Sukuma Kisukuma 3.2 million East Benue Congo, Bantu F20 Tanzania
Kamba Kikamba 3 million East Benue Congo, Bantu E20 Kenya
Mbundu Kimbundu 3 million East Benue Congo, Bantu H20 Angola (Luanda)
Efik Calabar 2-3 million East Benue Congo, Cross River Nigeria (Cross River State)

The speaker numbers are based on the Benue Congo Classification web link below. Congo stands for the Democratic Republic of the Congo , Congo-Brazzaville for the Republic of the Congo .

The class prefixes for Bantu language names (e.g. ki-, chi-, lu-, se-, isi- ) are usually no longer used in linguistic literature today. In this article, too, the short form is used without a prefix, e.g. B. Ganda instead of Luganda ; the long form with prefix is ​​given as an alternative name. The numbers of the Bantu languages ​​(e.g. G40) reflect the division into the Guthrie zones (G40 = Zone G, group of ten 40; see Bantu languages).

See also

literature

African languages

  • Joseph Greenberg: The Languages ​​of Africa. Mouton, The Hague and Indiana University Center, Bloomington 1963.
  • Bernd Heine and others (ed.): The languages ​​of Africa. Buske, Hamburg 1981.
  • Bernd Heine , Derek Nurse (Ed.): African Languages. An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 2000, ISBN 0-521-66178-1 . Inside: Kay Williamson and Roger Blench: Niger-Congo.
  • John Bendor-Samuel (Ed.): The Niger-Congo Languages: A Classification and Description of Africa's Largest Language Family. University Press of America, Lanham, New York, London 1989.
    Therein: Kay Williamson: Benue-Congo Overview.

For classification

  • Merritt Ruhlen: A Guide to the World's Languages. Classification. Arnold, Stanford 1987.
  • Diedrich Westermann: The western Sudan languages ​​and their relationship to Bantu. Announcements from the seminar for oriental languages. Berlin 1927.
  • Joseph Greenberg: Studies in African Linguistic Classification. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 1949-1950.
  • Kiyoshi Shimizu: A Lexicostatistical Study of Plateau Languages ​​and Jukun. Anthropological Linguistics 17th 1975.
  • Patrick Bennett and Jan Sterk: South Central Niger-Congo: A Reclassification. Studies in African Linguistics. 1977.
  • Ludwig Gerhardt: Kainji and Platoid. In: Bendor-Samuel 1989.
  • Chinyere Ohiri-Aniche: Language Diversification in the Akoko Area of ​​Western Nigeria. In: Roger Blench and Matthew Spriggs: Language and Archeology IV. Routledge, London 1999.

Web links