Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Niger–Congo is a hypothetical language family spoken over the majority of sub-Saharan Africa. [1] It unites the Mande languages, the Atlantic–Congo languages (which share a characteristic noun class system), and possibly several smaller groups of languages that are difficult to classify.
Luman is classified as Definitely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger Lumun (Lomon), also Kuku-Lumun , is a Niger–Congo language in the Talodi family spoken in the Nuba Mountains , Sudan.
An endangered language is a language that it is at risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. If it loses all of its native people, it becomes an extinct language . UNESCO defines four levels of language endangerment between "safe" (not endangered) and "extinct": [ 1 ]
Pages in category "Endangered Niger–Congo languages" The following 25 pages are in this category, out of 25 total. This list may not reflect recent changes .
A major branch of Niger–Congo languages is the Bantu phylum, which has a wider speech area than the rest of the family (see Niger–Congo B (Bantu) in the map above). The Niger–Kordofanian language family, joining Niger–Congo with the Kordofanian languages of south-central Sudan , was proposed in the 1950s by Joseph Greenberg .
Proto-Niger–Congo is traditionally assumed to have had a disyllabic root structure similar to that of Proto-Bantu, namely (C)V-CVCV [6] (Williamson 2000, [7] etc.). However, Roger Blench (2016) proposes a trisyllabic (CVCVCV) syllabic structure for Proto-Niger–Congo roots, [6] while Konstantin Pozdniakov (2016) suggests that the main prototypical structure of Proto-Niger–Congo roots is ...
okapi – from a language in the Congo; safari – from Swahili travel, ultimately from Arabic; sangoma – from Zulu – traditional healer (often used in South African English) tilapia – Possibly a latinization "thiape", the Tswana word for fish. [2] tsetse – from a Bantu language (Tswana tsetse, Luhya tsiisi)
The Dogon languages show very few remnants of the noun class system characteristic of much of Niger–Congo, leading linguists to conclude that they likely diverged from Niger–Congo very early. [citation needed] Roger Blench comments, [1] Dogon is both lexically and structurally very different from most other [Niger–Congo] families.