Societies and Cultures of Africa: Languages of Africa

Vocabulary and categorization of Africa's four major language families and their respective sub-families based on the lecture by Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu.

Paul Bohannan

A scholar who proposed that there were a classic number of 800 languages spoken in Africa.

Joseph Greenberg

The foremost American authority on African linguistics who classified African languages into four major families in his 1963 work, "The Languages of Africa."

Niger-Congo

The largest of the four major language families in terms of geographical area and the number of speakers; it was formerly referred to as Niger-Kordofanian by Greenberg in 1955.

Bantu

A major group within the Benue-Congo sub-family which dominates central and southern Africa and includes Zulu, Shona, Buganda, and Kinyarwanda.

Kwa

A sub-family of the Niger-Congo languages that includes Yoruba, Ijo, Nupe, Fon, Ga-Dangme, Akan, and Ewe.

Mende

A Niger-Congo sub-family involving languages such as Mande, Bambara, and Kpelle.

Atlantic

A sub-family of Niger-Congo that includes the Fulani and the Wolof languages.

Gur

A sub-family of the Niger-Congo language family that includes Senufo and Dogon.

Khordofanian

A Niger-Congo sub-family spoken in central Sudan around the Nuba mountains, involving languages like Katla and Rashad.

Khoisan

A tonal language family mainly spoken in Namibia and Botswana, involving the San, Khoi-Khoi, and Bergdama peoples.

'Click'

The most obvious identifying characteristic of the Khoisan language family, which has been adopted by some neighboring Bantu languages like Xhosa and Zulu.

Sudanic

Also known as Nilo-Saharan, Nilotic, Sudanic Nilotes, or MacroSudanic; this diverse language family is spoken in the Nile-Congo divide, central Sudan, upper Nile, and northern Great Lakes region.

Chari-Nile

A sub-grouping of the Sudanic family that contains the Nubian and Nilotic languages.

Nilotic

A division of the Chari-Nile group that includes the Shilluk, Dinka, Nuer, Turkana, and Masai languages.

Afro-Asiatic

A language family that dominates North Africa and possesses the world’s longest written history, with sub-families including Semitic, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, and Berber.

Hausa

A language of the Chadic sub-family (Afro-Asiatic) spoken widely, particularly in Nigeria.

Somali

A language belonging to the Cushitic sub-family of the Afro-Asiatic family, spoken within the Horn of Africa.

Semitic

A sub-family of Afro-Asiatic that includes Arabic, Aramaic (Syriac and Assyrian), and the extinct Akkadian language.

MacroSudanic

The alternative term used by Ottenberg & Ottenberg to describe the Sudanic or Nilo-Saharan language family.

Adamawan

A Niger-Congo sub-family that includes the Adamawa and Gbaya languages.