Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Most claimed Proto-Bantu is either confined to particular subgroups, or is widely attested outside Bantu proper." [ 6 ] According to this hypothesis, Bantu is actually a polyphyletic group that combines a number of smaller language families which ultimately belong to the (much larger) Southern Bantoid language family .
The Bantu languages descend from a common Proto-Bantu language, which is believed to have been spoken in what is now Cameroon in Central Africa. [21] An estimated 2,500–3,000 years ago (1000 BC to 500 BC), speakers of the Proto-Bantu language began a series of migrations eastward and southward, carrying agriculture with them.
In linguistics, the word Bantu, for the language families and its speakers, is an artificial term based on the reconstructed Proto-Bantu term for "people" or "humans". It was first introduced into modern academia (as Bâ-ntu) by Wilhelm Bleek in 1857 or 1858 and popularised in his Comparative Grammar of 1862. [7]
The Bantu expansion [3] [4] [5] was a major series of migrations of the original Proto-Bantu-speaking group, [6] [7] which spread from an original nucleus around West-Central Africa. In the process, the Proto-Bantu-speaking settlers displaced, eliminated or absorbed pre-existing hunter-gatherer and pastoralist groups that they encountered.
It is Southern Bantoid which contains the Bantu languages, which are spoken across most of Sub-Saharan Africa. This makes Benue–Congo one of the largest subdivisions of the Niger–Congo language family, both in number of languages, of which Ethnologue counts 976 (2017), and in speakers, numbering perhaps 350 million.
Southern Bantoid was first introduced by Williamson in a proposal that divided Bantoid into North and South branches. [2]The unity of the North Bantoid group was subsequently called into question, and Bantoid itself may be polyphyletic, but the work did establish Southern Bantoid as a valid genetic unit, something that has not happened for (Narrow) Bantu itself.
The Southern Bantu languages are a large group of Bantu languages, largely validated in Janson (1991/92). [1] They are nearly synonymous with Guthrie's Bantu zone S , apart from the debated exclusion of Shona and inclusion of Makhuwa .
Proto-Eskimo–Aleut. Proto-Eskimo. Proto-Inuit; Proto-Algic. Proto-Algonquian; Proto-Muskogean; Proto-Iroquoian; Proto-Uto-Aztecan. Proto-Nahuan; Proto-Mayan; Proto-Mixe–Zoquean language; Proto-Totonacan language; Proto-Na-Dené. Proto-Athabaskan; Proto-Oto-Manguean Proto-Otomí Proto-Mixtecan Proto-Mixtec Proto-Tucanoan Proto-Tupian