Episode 6 Niger Congo: Biggest Language Family in Africa

Language Families of the World

Dr John McWhorter

Film Review

The Niger-Congo language family consists of 1000-1500 languages spoken south of the Sahara desert. One out of every 13 people in the world speak a Niger-Congo language.

Not much is known about the original Proto-Niger-Congo language (which these modern languages are derived from). According to McWhorter, speakers of Niger-Congo languages separated so long ago that most have their own unique grammar, syntax and vocabulary. Moreover only a few of these 1000+ languages have been studied, and many are already dying.

It’s characteristic for Niger-Congo languages to have many genders (noun classes) Swahili, the best known Congo language, has eight genders: for (tools, animate objects, inanimate objects, botanical nouns, long things and abstract concepts). Swahili is spoken in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and a few other East African countries. The dominance of Swahili in Africa stems from its adoption by Arab trades as the language trade. Swahili has adopted numbers and many common words from Arabic.

Swahili was also adopted in the US Black nationalists during the sixties and seventies. McWhorter finds this ironic as African Americans trace their origin to the West Africa, where totally different languages are spoken.

Swahili is part of the Bantu sub-family of the Niger-Congo language family. At present there are 500 Bantu languages, including Kikuyu and Kongo. The Bantu languages spoken in Northwest Africa (Nigeria, Cameroons) are totally unlike Swahili.

Colson and Zulu are very similar Bantu dialects spoken in South Africa (which only appeared in South Africa around 1600 AD. There is also a tiny island of Bantu speakers in Sudan.

Linguists believed Bantu languages emerged after the click languages (see The History of African Click Languages) and replaced them in most areas. For example, Pygmies gave up their own language when their region was overrun by Bantu speakers.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/6120000/6120012