The Bantu languages (technically Narrow Bantu languages) constitute a grouping belonging to the Niger-Congo family. This grouping is deep down in the genealogical tree of the Antroid grouping, which in turn is deep down in the Niger-Congo tree. By one estimate, there are 513 languages in the Bantu grouping, 681 languages in Antroid, and 1,514 in Niger-Congo. Bantu languages are spoken largely east and south of the present day country of Nigeria; ...
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The Bantu languages (technically Narrow Bantu languages) constitute a grouping belonging to the Niger-Congo family. This grouping is deep down in the genealogical tree of the Antroid grouping, which in turn is deep down in the Niger-Congo tree. By one estimate, there are 513 languages in the Bantu grouping, 681 languages in Antroid, and 1,514 in Niger-Congo. Bantu languages are spoken largely east and south of the present day country of Nigeria; i.e., in the regions commonly known as central Africa, east Africa, and southern Africa. Parts of this Bantu chunk of Africa also have languages from outside the Niger-Congo family (see map).
The technical term Bantu, simply meaning "people", was first used by Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel Bleek (1827-1875) as this is reflected in many of the languages of this group. A common characteristic of Bantu languages is that they use words such as umuntu or mutu for "person", and the plural prefix for human nouns starting with "umu- or mu-" (class 1) in...
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