Administrators, upwizcampeditors
0
edits
Bantu languages: Difference between revisions
From Chalo Chatu, Zambia online encyclopedia
→Origin
No edit summary |
(→Origin) |
||
| Line 46: | Line 46: | ||
==Origin== | ==Origin== | ||
The Bantu languages descend from a common Proto-Bantu language, which is believed to have been spoken in what is now Cameroon in West Africa.<ref name="Adler">Philip J. Adler, Randall L. Pouwels, ''World Civilizations: To 1700 Volume 1 of World Civilizations'', (Cengage Learning: 2007), p.169.</ref> An estimated 2,500–3,000 years ago (1000 BC to 500 BC), although other sources put the start of the Bantu Expansion closer to 3000 BC,<ref>Genetic and Demographic Implications of the Bantu Expansion: Insights from Human Paternal Lineages [http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/7/1581.abstract Gemma Berniell-Lee et al.]</ref> speakers of the Proto-Bantu language began a series of migrations eastward and southward, carrying agriculture with them. This | The Bantu languages descend from a common Proto-Bantu language, which is believed to have been spoken in what is now Cameroon in West Africa.<ref name="Adler">Philip J. Adler, Randall L. Pouwels, ''World Civilizations: To 1700 Volume 1 of World Civilizations'', (Cengage Learning: 2007), p.169.</ref> An estimated 2,500–3,000 years ago (1000 BC to 500 BC), although other sources put the start of the Bantu Expansion closer to 3000 BC,<ref>Genetic and Demographic Implications of the Bantu Expansion: Insights from Human Paternal Lineages [http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/7/1581.abstract Gemma Berniell-Lee et al.]</ref> speakers of the Proto-Bantu language began a series of migrations eastward and southward, carrying agriculture with them. This Bantu expansion came to dominate Sub-Saharan Africa east of Cameroon, an area where Bantu peoples now constitute nearly the entire population.<ref name="Adler"/><ref name="Falola">Toyin Falola, Aribidesi Adisa Usman, ''Movements, borders, and identities in Africa'', (University Rochester Press: 2009), p.4.</ref> | ||
The technical term Bantu, meaning "human beings" or simply "people", was first used by Wilhelm Bleek (1827–1875), as this is reflected in many of the languages of this group. A common characteristic of Bantu languages is that they use words such as ''muntu'' or ''mutu'' for "human being" or in simplistic terms "person", and the plural prefix for human nouns starting with ''mu-'' (class 1) in most languages is ''ba-'' (class 2), thus giving ''bantu'' for "people". Bleek, and later Carl Meinhof, pursued extensive studies comparing the grammatical structures of Bantu languages. | The technical term Bantu, meaning "human beings" or simply "people", was first used by Wilhelm Bleek (1827–1875), as this is reflected in many of the languages of this group. A common characteristic of Bantu languages is that they use words such as ''muntu'' or ''mutu'' for "human being" or in simplistic terms "person", and the plural prefix for human nouns starting with ''mu-'' (class 1) in most languages is ''ba-'' (class 2), thus giving ''bantu'' for "people". Bleek, and later Carl Meinhof, pursued extensive studies comparing the grammatical structures of Bantu languages. | ||
