Grassland languages

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The grassland languages form a large subunit of the southern bantoid languages , a branch of the Benue-Congo languages , which in turn belong to the Niger-Congo language family .

The approximately 70 grassland languages ​​are spoken by around 2.5 million people in the Cameroon grasslands in the west of the country of Cameroon . Larger languages ​​(with 100–300,000 speakers) are mainly found in the Bamileke group ; these include Ghomala , Yemba, Medumba , Fe'fe ' and Ngiemboon . Other languages ​​with at least 100,000 speakers are Bamun , Ngemba (including Bafut ), Meta ' , Kom and Lamnso'.

Position of the prairie languages ​​within the Niger-Congo

  • Niger-Congo > Volta-Congo> Benue-Congo> East-Benue-Congo> Bantoid-Cross> Bantoid> South-Bantoid> Grassland languages

Internal classification of prairie languages

Numbers of speakers below 10,000 are not specified.

See also

literature

  • 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 and Derek Nurse (eds.): African Languages. An Introduction. Cambridge University Press 2000.
    In it: 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: John R. Watters and Jacqueline Leroy: Southern Bantoid.
  • Patrick Bennett and Jan Sterk: South Central Niger-Congo: A Reclassification. Studies in African Linguistics. 1977.

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