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Bantu languages: Difference between revisions
From Chalo Chatu, Zambia online encyclopedia
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(Created page with "{{Infobox language family |name=Bantu |altname=Narrow Bantu |region=Subsaharan Africa, mostly Southern Hemisphere |ethnicity=Bantu peoples |familycolor=Niger-Congo |fam2=Atlan...") |
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|child20='''Southern Bantu languages'''<br>(unclassified): ''Buya language'' | |child20='''Southern Bantu languages'''<br>(unclassified): ''Buya language'' | ||
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The '''Bantu languages''' ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|b|æ|n|t|uː}}),<ref>"Bantu". ''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''.</ref> technically the '''Narrow Bantu languages''' (as opposed to "Wide Bantu", a loosely defined categorization which includes other Bantoid languages), constitute a traditional branch of the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility,<ref>Derek Nurse, 2006, "Bantu Languages", in the ''Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics''</ref> though the distinction between language and dialect is often unclear, and ''Ethnologue'' counts 535 languages.<ref>[http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=73-16 Ethnologue report for Southern Bantoid]. The figure of 535 includes the 13 Mbam languages considered Bantu in Guthrie's classification and thus counted by Nurse (2006)</ref> Bantu languages are spoken largely east and south of present-day Cameroon, that is, in the regions commonly known as Central Africa, Southeast Africa, and Southern Africa. Parts of the Bantu area include languages from other language families (see map). | |||
