Niger-Congo
Sub-Saharan language family
Niger-Congo is a language family spanning most of sub-Saharan Africa, containing more individual languages than any other family in the world—over 1,500 by most counts.
It includes widely spoken languages like Swahili, Yoruba, Zulu, and Shona.
The family is named for the Niger and Congo rivers, which run through regions where many of these languages are spoken.
Linguists group Niger-Congo languages into several branches, with the Bantu languages forming the largest and most geographically widespread subset.
African language family
Science of language sounds
- morphologyStudy of structural forms
- syntaxRules for arranging words
- tonalRelating to pitch
- grammaticalFollowing language rules
typology · diachronic · comparative · proto-language · reconstruction · cognates · lexical · phonemic
South of great desert
- West AfricaContinent's western bulge
- Central AfricaMiddle of the continent
- East AfricaContinental region by Indian Ocean
- Southern AfricaContinent's bottom portion
Nigeria · Cameroon · Ghana · Senegal · Kenya · Tanzania · Uganda · Mali
Bantu
African language family
phonology
Science of language sounds
- morphologyStudy of structural forms
- syntaxRules for arranging words
- tonalRelating to pitch
grammatical · typology · diachronic · comparative · proto-language · reconstruction · cognates · lexical · phonemic · agglutinative
sub-Saharan
South of great desert
- West AfricaContinent's western bulge
- Central AfricaMiddle of the continent
- East AfricaContinental region by Indian Ocean
Southern Africa · Nigeria · Cameroon · Ghana · Senegal · Kenya · Tanzania · Uganda · Mali · Burkina Faso
Mel
Shortened given name