African Languages

I  INTRODUCTION 

African Languages, group of languages that are native to Africa. Scholars estimate that the number of distinctive languages spoken on the African continent totals at least 2,000—more languages than are spoken on any other continent. Some experts place that number even higher. Of these languages, about 50 have 500,000 or more speakers. The majority of African languages are spoken by relatively few people. Hadza, spoken in Tanzania, ranks among the languages with the fewest speakers—about 200 people.

Swahili and Hausa are the two most widely spoken African languages. Swahili is spoken by nearly 50 million people, most of whom live in East and Central Africa. About 25 million people speak Hausa, primarily in the West African country of Nigeria. Other African languages with large numbers of speakers include Fulfulde in Senegal, Cameroon, and Chad; Yoruba, spoken in Nigeria and Benin; and Igbo of Nigeria.

Not all languages spoken in Africa are native to the continent. Arabic, which many people in northern Africa speak as their first language, was brought to Africa by immigrants from Arabia between the 7th and the 11th centuries. Malagasy, the language of Madagascar, belongs to the Austronesian group of languages with origins in Indonesia. European colonists brought English, French, and Portuguese to Africa, starting in the 1500s.

II  CLASSIFYING AFRICAN LANGUAGES  

American linguist Joseph H. Greenberg provided the first comprehensive classification of African languages. In The Languages of Africa (1963) he traced the historical origin and development of African languages, and classified them into four major groups: Niger-Congo, Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan, and Khoisan. Today, the largest language group in number of speakers, Niger-Congo, has from 300 million to 400 million speakers. The second largest group, Afro-Asiatic, has from 200 million to 300 million, followed by Nilo-Saharan with nearly 30 million and Khoisan with about 200,000 to 300,000. These figures represent rough estimates, however; accurate figures are unavailable, and many Africans speak more than one language. 

In classifying African languages, Greenberg compared lists of basic words from a large number of languages. He also compared similarities in the forms and functions of grammatical structures. Languages belonging to the same group share certain basic vocabulary—words known as cognates—and grammatical features that trace back to a common origin. Linguists refer to this shared origin as the protolanguage or the ancestral language.

Dialects form when groups of people who speak the same language move apart, and their languages change in different ways. At first, each group can understand the variants spoken by the other groups, but after hundreds of years of separation the variants may become mutually unintelligible. By that time, distinct languages have formed with cognates and similar grammatical systems. Swahili, for example, belongs to the Bantu language group. All Bantu languages trace their roots to Cameroon and western Nigeria, where linguists believe the ancestral language originated.

Linguists describe most African languages as tonal, because the pitch at which a syllable or group of syllables is pronounced can indicate meaning. Some African languages have a noun class system in which speakers attach prefixes and suffixes to noun stems to indicate singular or plural or to express qualities of the noun, such as size or animacy (whether the entity referred to is animate or inanimate). Other African languages distinguish between masculine and feminine nouns, or between masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns.

III  NIGER-CONGO FAMILY  

Languages in the Niger-Congo family have an estimated 300 million to 400 million speakers. The family has seven main subgroups, six of which cover West Africa and the Central African Republic. Bantu, a single offshoot of the seventh subgroup, is spoken in most of the southern half of Africa. The subgroups of the Niger-Congo family are Benue-Congo (including Bantu), West Atlantic, Mande, Voltaic, Kwa, Adamawa East, and Kordofanian. The Niger-Congo family descends from a protolanguage dating back 5000 years.

The Benue-Congo subgroup is the largest branch of the Niger-Congo family. Bantu languages, one of its branches, have nearly 100 million speakers. Some historical linguists and archaeologists have theorized that the rapid expansion of Bantu languages from the proto-Bantu homeland in Cameroon and eastern Nigeria occurred in three major waves of migration, from 3000 to 4000 years ago. Their research indicates that the first wave of expansion created North Bantu. The second and third expansions developed into Western and Eastern Bantu. Swahili, the most widely spoken language in Africa with nearly 50 million speakers, derives from Eastern Bantu. Other Bantu languages include Shona, Tswana, Zulu, and Xhosa, spoken in southern Africa; Kikuyu, Kisukuma and Luo, spoken in eastern Africa; and Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, and Kirundi, spoken in central Africa.

Languages in the West Atlantic subgroup are spoken near Africa’s Atlantic coast, from Senegal to Chad. The dominant language of this group, Fulfulde, has more than 13 million speakers in Senegal, Cameroon, and Chad. Other languages in this subgroup include Wolof in Senegal and Temne in Guinea. Languages in the Mande subgroup are spoken in Senegal, Mali, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Bambara, spoken in Mali, is the principal language in this subgroup. Other Mande languages include Mende, spoken in Sierra Leone, and Kpelle, spoken in Liberia and Guinea.

The Voltaic subgroup, also referred to as Gur, has speakers in Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso. Kwa languages include Twi and Yoruba, spoken in Ghana and Nigeria respectively. Yoruba has the largest number of speakers in this subgroup, with more than 22 million. Other Kwa languages are spoken in Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, and Benin. Languages of the Adamawa East subgroup are spoken in Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), and the Central African Republic. The Kordofanian subgroup has fewer than 500,000 speakers in the Nuba mountains of Sudan. Moro, the language in this subgroup with the most speakers, has about 30,000.

Most languages in the Niger-Congo family, with the exception of Swahili and Fulfulde, are tonal. In tonal languages, the meaning of the same set of letters may vary with the pitch at which the speaker pronounces them. In Yoruba, for example, the word bi means “to deliver a baby” if pronounced with a middle tone, but if pronounced with a low tone it means “to throw up,” and if pronounced with a high tone, “to ask.” In Bambara, the word ba means “river” when pronounced with a high tone, and “goat” when pronounced with a low tone.

Bantu languages and other languages in the Benue-Congo subgroup form verbs by adding prefixes and suffixes to a verb stem. Prefixes, which come before the verb stem, indicate who (the subject), when (the time period), and what (the object); suffixes, which come after the verb stem, express prepositional phrases, causal relationships, and passive voice. The English sentence “He is cooking for me,” for example, can be expressed by a single word, ananipikia, in Swahili. In Shona, another Bantu language, ari kundibikira expresses “he is cooking for me.” The verb stem pik in Swahili and bik in Shona are cognates that can be traced back to the proto-Bantu language. Other words that can be traced back to the Niger-Congo protolanguage include “yesterday,” which is jana in Swahili (Bantu subgroup) and ana in Yoruba (Kwa subgroup), and “three,” which is tatu in Swahili, eeta in Yoruba, and ati in Fulfulde (West Atlantic subgroup).

Another important feature of languages in the Benue-Congo subgroup is a noun class system in which prefixes and suffixes are attached to the noun stem. In Bantu languages, nouns normally consist of a prefix followed by a noun stem. The prefix can indicate number, the equivalent in English of one person and people. In Swahili m before a noun indicates one, and wa indicates more than one; thus, mtu means “one person” and watu, “people.” In Zulu the singular/plural alternation is umu/aba, and umuntu and abantu designate “one person” and “people.” In Shona this alternation is mu/va, and munhu/vanhu express whether one person or more than one is meant. The Swahili watu, Zulu abantu, and Shona vanhu are similar words that go back to proto-Bantu.

In Bantu languages nouns and other parts of speech—such as demonstratives (“this” and “those,” for example), verbs, and adjectives—undergo changes for agreement, as the following example demonstrates. The English sentence “This good chair is broken” is expressed in Swahili as kiti hiki kizuri kimevunjika; the plural form, “These good chairs are broken,” becomes viti hivi vizuri vimevunjika. The prefixes ki- and vi- of kiti/viki (chair/chairs) agree with the demonstrative hiki/hivi (this/these), the adjectives kizuri/vizuri (good), and the verbs kimevunjika/vimevunjika (broken). This type of agreement occurs in all Bantu languages.

IV  AFRO-ASIATIC FAMILY  

Afro-Asiatic languages have an estimated 200 million to 300 million speakers in northern Africa, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the area around Lake Chad in central Africa. The basic vocabulary shared by the Afro-Asiatic languages reflects a pastoral life spent raising and herding livestock and growing food crops. The Afro-Asiatic family is divided into five subgroups with a total of more than 350 languages. These subgroups are Chadic, Berber, Semitic, Cushitic, and Egyptian. The protolanguage of this family, which began to diverge into separate branches about 6000 years ago, is known as ancestral Semitic. It is also the protolanguage of other Semitic languages, such as Arabic and Hebrew.

Chadic, which consists of about 100 languages with more than 30 million speakers, is the largest subgroup in the Afro-Asiatic family. Hausa, its principal language, is also the most important language in the Afro-Asiatic family. About 22 million people speak Hausa as a first language or fluent second language, and most of them live in northern Nigeria and southern Niger. Hausa also serves as the lingua franca—that is, a language for trade and communication—in West Africa, especially Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire, and in parts of Libya. Hausa has borrowed many words from neighboring languages, such as Yoruba and Tuareg. It has also borrowed extensively from Arabic.

Berber languages have approximately 11 million speakers in northern Africa. The dominant language of this group, Tamarshak (also spelled Tamasheq), is spoken by the Tuareg people. Semitic languages include Amharic and Tigrinya, which linguists trace back to Ge’ez, a language spoken in northern Ethiopia from 1000 to 2000 years ago. Beja and Oromo rank as the principal languages of the Cushitic subgroup, with Beja spoken in Sudan and Eritrea, and Oromo in Ethiopia. The Egyptian subgroup dates back at least 5000 years, but the Egyptian language has not been spoken for about 600 years. Its final phase, known as Coptic, remains alive as the liturgical language of the Coptic Church.

Languages in the Afro-Asiatic family share many features. One shared feature is the emphatic consonant, such that the amount of stress the speaker places on a consonant changes the meaning of certain words. For example, the Hausa word mana means “for us,” whereas with an emphatic pronunciation of the consonant n in manna, it means “press against.” Similarly, hama means “hammer” but pronounced with an emphatic m in hamma, it means “yawning.” The languages in this family also distinguish between masculine and feminine nouns. Feminine nouns typically have a final t. For example, in Amharic the word for man is sew and for woman is set; likewise, ligu means boy, and ligitu, girl.

V  NILO-SAHARAN FAMILY  

The Nilo-Saharan language family covers much of the eastern Sahara, the upper Nile Valley, areas around Lake Victoria in east central Africa, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Languages in this family are spoken by an estimated 18 million to 30 million people. Nilo-Saharan divides into six subgroups: Nilotic (or Chari-Nile), Songhai, Saharan, Maban, Koman, and Fur. The ancestral tongue was spoken thousands of years ago in the Sahara between Chad and the Nile.

Languages in the largest of the six subgroups, Nilotic, are spoken along the Nile and Chari rivers. Languages in this subgroup include Luo, spoken in Kenya; Masai (or Maasai), spoken in Kenya and Tanzania; and Nubian, spoken along the Nile Valley in Sudan and Egypt. Other languages in this subgroup are spoken in Chad, Ethiopia, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic. Songhai is spoken along the Niger River in Mali and Niger. The Saharan subgroup group comprises Kanuri, spoken in Nigeria; Teda, spoken in central Sahara; and Zaghawa, spoken in Chad and Sudan. Maban is spoken in Chad, and Koman, along a portion of the border between Ethiopia and Sudan. Fur is another small subgroup spoken in the Darfur province of Sudan.

Nilo-Saharan languages are tonal, like most languages in the Niger-Congo family. Some Nilo-Saharan languages add both prefixes and suffixes to verbs; others add only suffixes. However, Nilo-Saharan languages do not have a noun class agreement system like the Bantu languages of the Niger-Congo family.

VI  KHOISAN FAMILY  

The Khoisan language family has about 12 languages in its two subgroups: South African Khoisan and East African Khoisan. An estimated 200,000 to 300,000 people speak these languages. Languages of South African Khoisan, which include Nama and Naron, are spoken in and around the Kalahari Desert of northern South Africa, southwestern Botswana, and Namibia. Languages of East African Khoisan include Sandawe and Hadza, both of which are spoken in Tanzania.

Languages in this group share the feature of clicks, which speakers produce by sucking in air. One click is made by pressing the lips together and then releasing them by sucking in air. The resulting click resembles the sound of a kiss.

VII  AFRICAN WRITING SYSTEMS 

The three writing systems native to Africa include the Coptic script of ancient Egypt, the Ge’ez script of Ethiopia, and the Vai script of West Africa. Coptic, a script based on the Greek alphabet, replaced the ancient Egyptian writing system of hieroglyphs in about the 3rd century ad. The Ge’ez script, which dates back to ad 300, is used in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia. In this syllabic writing system, each character stands for a syllable rather than a single sound. The Vai script, which is also syllabic, is used in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Many African languages, including Hausa, Swahili, and Bambara, borrowed the Arabic script for writing. Arabic script, however, is not well suited to writing in African languages. Arabic has only three vowels, expressed phonetically with a, i, and u, whereas Swahili has five vowels, a, e, i, o, and u. In addition, the Swahili consonants p, g, ch, and v do not exist in Arabic. The Arabic script was largely replaced by the Roman alphabet (used for English and many European languages), which was brought to Africa by Christian missionaries and European colonists.

VIII  THE ART OF ORAL COMMUNICATION  

An oral tradition is universal among African language groups, facilitating the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next. Knowledge about iron smelting, farming, and animal herding, for example, has been passed down orally. In addition, greetings, eulogies (poems of praise), story telling, proverbs, and riddles all contribute to the rich oral tradition of the African people. In all African cultures, a greeting encounter is an art in oral communication. Greetings go back and forth for several turns, are highly involved, and always indicate the age-status of participants. Special greeting forms and gestures come into play when one of the participants has a higher age-status. In Swahili, for example, a younger person greets an adult with the word shikamoo, meaning “I hold your legs.” The younger person usually bows slightly while saying shikamoo. In Yoruba, a younger person must use the honorific pronoun E when greeting an older person. If the younger person is a young woman, she must kneel; and if a young man, he must lie down on the ground.

Contributed By:

Alwiya S. Omar

Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.