Hai friends in this article let us discuss about one of the language family of Africa,"Niger - Congo Family"

The recent statistical report says that, in the continent of Africa there are more than 200 languages spoken by the people.To be specific the number of languages, spoken in African continent lies between 2000 and 3000 languages.

Apart from this there are over 8000  dialects, that fits into these 300 languages.The major four classification of  language families that are spoken in Africa can be divided into six types namely

1)Afro - Asiatic

2)Nilo - Saharan

3)Niger - Congo A

4)Niger - Congo B

5)Khoi - San

6)Austronesian

Let us discuss about the Niger - Congo Family in this article

This Niger-Congo family descends from a protolanguage which has its history 5000 years back.It has been estimated that f rom30 crores to 40 crores of people in Africa used to speak the languages in the Niger-Congo . This Niger - Congo family has seven main subgroups.The image below shows the map of Africa, which shows variou languages spoken in different parts of the continent.

The seven subgroups of the Niger-Congo family includes

1)Benue-Congo (including Bantu)

2)West Atlantic

3)Mande

4)Voltaic

5)Kwa

6)Adamawa East and

7)Kordofanian.

1)Benue-Congo (including Bantu)

Out of this seven, six of which cover West Africa and the Central African Republic. One of the language which comes under the

Benue-Congo is the Bantu language and  is a single offshoot. This Bantu is spoken in most of the southern half of Africa. 

The Benue-Congo subgroup is the largest branch of the Niger-Congo family.Report states that over 100 million people speak the Bantu language.

This Batu language is the largest rapidly growing language in Africa, with its users are rapidly increasing.Historians and archaeologists found a reason for this and they have found that the rapid expansion of Bantu languages begin from the proto-Bantu in Cameroon and eastern Nigeria and history reveals that it occurred in three major waves of migration, from 3000 to 4000 years ago.

These researches says that the first wave of expansion was created in North Bantu and it was succedde by the second and third expansions which was developed into Western and Eastern Bantu.

Of these Bantu languages, the most widely spoken language is Swahili and in Africa there are some 50 million speakers,and they are mostly concentrated to Eastern Bantu.Apart from this Bantu language, other Bantu languages are given below based on the region where they are used by the people

Bantu Languages spoken in Southern Africa:

i)Shona

ii)Tswana

iii)Zulu

iv)Xhosa


Bantu Languages spoken Eastern Africa:

i)Kikuyu

ii)Kisukuma

iii)Luo

Bantu Languages spoken Central Africa:

i)Kikongo

ii)Kinyarwanda

iii)Kirundi

2)West Atlantic

The West Atlantic subgroup are spoken mostly near the Africa’s Atlantic coast,and the countries which speak these languages includes from Senegal to Chad.In this family the dominant language which is used by most of the people is Fulfulde.

This Fulfulde has more than 13 million speakers and they are mostly used by people in Senegal, Cameroon, and Chad. Apart from this languages, other languages in this subgroup is

i)"Wolof" used in Senegal and

ii)"Temne" in Guinea.

3)Mande

Usually the languages in this sub group are spoken in

i)Senegal

ii)Mali

iii)Guinea

iv)Liberia

v)Sierra Leone.

In this subgroup Bambara,which is spoken in Mali, is considered the principal language .Other Mande languages in this catoegary includes

i)"Mende" spoken in Sierra Leone

ii)"Kpelle" spoken in Liberia and Guinea.

4)Voltaic

The other name for this Voltaic sub group is Gur,this language has speakers in different countries in Africa and it includes

i)Mali

ii)Cote d’Ivoire

iii)Ghana

iv)Togo

v)Benin

vi)Nigeria and

vii)Burkina Faso.

5)Kwa

The two most important language which comes under this subgroup includes the Twi and Yoruba, and they are mainly in Ghana and Nigeria respectively. Apart rom these two language, the language which is spoken widely in this subgroup is Yoruba, which has speakers of more than 22 million.

Other than these languages other Kwa languages are spoken in countries like

i)Liberia

ii)Cote d’Ivoire

iii)Togo and

iv)Benin.

6)Adamawa East

Most the languages of the Adamawa East subgroup are spoken widely in three important countries and these includes

i)Cameroon

ii)The Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) and

iii)The Central African Republic.

7)Kordofanian

The last subgroup of the Niger- Congo family is the Kordofanian subgroup and it has fewer than 500,000 speakers and they are found especially in the Nuba mountains of Sudan. The important language under this sub divison is Moro and it has about 30,000 speakers