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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 Bantoid 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 Bantoid, and 1,514 in Niger-Congo.http://www.ethnologue.org/show_family.asp?subid=90099 Bantu languages are spoken basically east and south of the present day nation 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 word Bantu was first used by Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel Bleek ( 1827 - 1875 ) with the meaning 'people', as this is reflected in many of the languages of this group. A common characteristic of Bantu languages is that they use a stem form such as ''-ntu'' or ''-tu'' for 'person', and the plural prefix for people in many languages is ''ba-'', together giving ''ba-ntu'' "people". Bleek, and later Carl Meinhof , pursued extensive comparative studies of Bantu language grammars. CLASSIFICATION OF THE BANTU LANGUAGESMAHO 2001 The classification of the Bantu languages is still in an incipient state. There still is no well founded genetic classification. The most widely used system, the alphanumeric coding system developed by Malcolm Guthrie , is mainly areal. In recent decades, there have been at least two proposals for a genetic classification system to replace the Guthrie system. The "Tervuren" proposal of Bastin, Coupez, and Mann suffers from inferior methodology (its reliance on the "lexicostatistic" method) and the SIL proposal suffers from failure of its creators to publish their methodology. The Guthrie system needs to be updated, e.g., by the addition of languages previously overlooked. A classification system for a grouping of languages must be genetic to be scientifically valid; but for the time being, the development of a rigorous genetic classification of many subdivisions of Niger-Congo is hampered by insufficient data. Progress in this field depends on the production of extensive dictionaries for many more member languages. The Guthrie, Tervuren, and SIL lists are compared side by side in Maho 2002 . LANGUAGE STRUCTURE The phoneme inventory of Proto-Bantu and its core vocabulary were reconstructed by Guthrie. The most prominent Grammatical characteristic of Bantu languages is the extensive use of Affix es (see Sesotho Language and Luganda Language for detailed discussions of these affixes). Each noun belongs to a Class , and each language may have about ten classes altogether, somewhat like Genders in European languages. The class is indicated by a prefix on the noun, as well as on adjectives and verbs agreeing with it. Plural is indicated by a change of prefix. The verb has a number of prefixes. In Swahili , for example, ''Mtoto mdogo amekisoma'' means 'The small child has read it book '. ''Mtoto'' 'child' governs the adjective prefix ''m-'' and the verb subject prefix ''a-''. Then comes perfect tense ''-me-'' and an object marker ''-ki-'' agreeing with implicit ''kitabu'' 'book'. Pluralizing to 'children' gives ''Watoto wadogo wamekisoma'', and Plural izing to 'books' (''vitabu'') gives it ''Watoto wadogo wamevisoma''. Bantu words are typically made up of ''-u-''; ''-u'' has also been added at the end of the word. Another example is ''buledi'' for "bread". Similar effects are seen in Loanwords for other non-African CV languages like Japanese . The Bantu language with the largest number of speakers is Swahili (G 40), while the Bantu languages with the most ''native'' speakers are Shona and Zulu . Judging from the history of Swahili, some linguists believe that Bantu languages are on a continuum from purely Tonal Languages to languages with no tone at all. Reduplication Reduplication is a common morphological phenomenon in Bantu languages and is usually used to indicate frequency of the action signalled by the (unreduplicated) verb stem {Link without Title}
Popular names that have reduplication include A LIST OF COMMON BANTU LANGUAGES The following is a short list of Bantu languages that may be relatively well known:
Most are known in English without the class prefix (''Swahili'', ''Tswana'', ''Ndebele''), but are sometimes used with the (language-specific) prefix (''Kiswahili'', ''Setswana'', ''Sindebele''). The bare (prefixless) form typically does not occur in the language itself. So, in the country of Botswana the people are the ''Batswana'', 'one person' is a 'Motswana', and the language is ' Setswana '. Today most Bantu linguists would regard the southwards migration, or Bantu Expansion , that started about 2000 years before present as originating in the region of eastern Nigeria or Cameroon . BANTU WORDS POPULARISED IN WESTERN CULTURES Some words from various Bantu languages have been borrowed into western languages. These include:
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