Niger-Congo is, by number of languages, the largest language family in the world, encompassing well over a thousand languages across sub-Saharan Africa, including the Bantu languages that alone account for several hundred of them and roughly a third of the continent's population. Its unifying features include noun class systems and, in many branches, agglutinative verb morphology. Kordofanian and Mande, both proposed as Niger-Congo branches, are the family's most contested members; some comparativists treat one or both as independent families related to Niger-Congo only distantly, if at all.
Facts
Disputed
Proto-Language StatusNo Proto-Niger-Congo has been securely reconstructed, and the genealogical unity of Niger-Congo as a single family, rather than a geographic grouping of related but separately descended families, remains an open question in historical linguistics. 3 Niger-Congo unity itself, as opposed to a looser areal grouping of several distinct large families such as Atlantic-Congo, is disputed among historical linguists; this atlas follows the broader traditional grouping while naming the dispute. Speaker CountAggregate across the Niger-Congo languages; mid-2020s estimate. Connections
Ancestor Of
Atlantic-Congo is the largest primary branch of Niger-Congo, containing the great majority of the family's languages including Bantu.
Bantu is classified within the Southern Bantoid group of Benue-Congo, itself a major branch of the Volta-Congo classification inside Niger-Congo.
Source Glottolog
Source Wikipedia: Gur Languages
Ijoid is generally treated as an early-branching primary division of Niger-Congo, coordinate with Atlantic-Congo and Mande.
Mande is generally treated as an early-branching primary division of Niger-Congo, coordinate with Atlantic-Congo and Ijoid.
Associated With
Niger-Congo is one of the four African language families Greenberg proposed in The Languages of Africa (1963).
Source Wikipedia: Joseph Greenberg
Includes
Source The Cambridge Encyclopedia of LanguageDavid Crystal (editor)
Source Wikipedia: Yoruba Language
Sources
1. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language
David Crystal (editor), Cambridge University Press, 2010
2. Ethnologue: Languages of the World
3. Glottolog
Wikipedia: Niger-Congo Languages
WikipediaWestermann, Greenberg, and others sectionQuote, Westermann, Greenberg, and others section
Consequently, he renamed the family Congo-Kordofanian, later Niger-Kordofanian.
Wikipedia: Joseph Greenberg
Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: Joseph Greenberg, Africa sectionView the Source Wikipedia: Yoruba Language
Wikimedia FoundationIncludes: Yoruba, Infobox, Language familyQuote, Includes: Yoruba, Infobox, Language family
Niger-Congo(?) - Atlantic-Congo - Volta-Congo - Volta-Niger - Yoruboid - Edekiri - Yoruba
Wikipedia: Gur Languages
Wikimedia FoundationAncestor Of: Gur, Introduction, first paragraphQuote, Ancestor Of: Gur, Introduction, first paragraph
The Gur languages, also known as Central Gur or Mabia, belong to the Niger-Congo languages.
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