Kunte Kinte spoke Mandinko

Episode 7 Niger Congo: Biggest Language Family in Africa Part II

Language Families of the World

Dr John McWhorter

Film Review

In McWhorter’s second lecture on the Niger-Congo family of languages, he focuses on on the wide variety of subfamilies. Unlike English and Persian, which underwent simplification after large numbers of adult speakers were forced to learn them (following conquest) – all Niger-Congo subfamilies retain their original complexity and are extremely difficult to learn.

• Ijaw: spoken on the west coast of Nigeria is atypical of Niger-Congo languages in that it has no genders and places verbs at the end of the sentence. McWhorter hypothesizes that Ijaw was most likely Nigeria’s indigenous language, replaced by more modern Niger-Congo languages when the region was overwhelmed by Niger-Congo speakers.
• Fulu:  (part of the Atlantic subfamily of Niger-Congo) spoken in Senegal. It has 20 genders (noun classes), which are designated by suffixes.
• Edo: (spoken in Benin) uses tones (like Chinese) to designate tense.Bambara, spoken in West Africa, uses tones in place of a definite/indefinite article (the/a).
• Twi: (spoken in southern and central Ghana) uses tones to different between identical words with totally different meanings.
• Yoruba and Fangbe: (spoken in Nigeria) both use tones, while Fangbe uses reduplication.*
• Ibo and Hausa: (also spoken in Nigeria) don’t use tones.
• Manding: subfamily of languages spoken in Burkina Faso, Sengal, Guinea-Bisseau, Sierra Leone, Mali, Liberia, Ivory Coast and Gambia. The best known Manding language is Mandinka, spoken in Gambia. Kunte Kinte, in Alex Haley’s fictional novel Roots, spoke Mandinka.

*A widespread linguistic process in which a part or an exact copy of a word is repeated to alter meaning,

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

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/6120000/6120014