Niger-Congo languages

Introduction
Early records
Classification of Niger-Congo languages
Widespread characteristics of Niger-Congo languages
- Noun classes
- Tone
- Vowel harmony
- Nasality
- Verb serialization

References & Edit History Quick Facts & Related Topics

Images

Thematic map of Africa showing the distribution of Niger-Congo language branches. Distinct colors represent language groups such as Atlantic, Mande, Gur, Kwa, Benue-Congo, and Bantu, with Bantu languages covering most of central, eastern, and southern Africa. A numbered key lists prominent languages in each area, and country borders are marked for reference.

The Niger-Congo language family, with the branches shown in bold.

Map of Africa showing the distribution of major language families, with regions color-coded for Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, Afro-Asiatic, Khoisan, Austronesian, and Indo-European languages. The map also labels major ethnic groups and peoples within each region, such as Arabs in North Africa, Fulani and Hausa in West Africa, and Zulu and Xhosa in southern Africa.

At a Glance

Niger-Congo languages summary

Quizzes

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Related Questions

About what share of Africa’s population speaks a Niger-Congo language?
How are the Benue-Congo languages related to the Bantu languages?
How can noun-class prefixes change into suffixes over time?
How did Arabic influence the vocabulary of Swahili?
How did Greenberg use cognates to classify Niger-Congo languages?
How did Joseph H. Greenberg classify Niger-Congo languages?
How did Swahili become a lingua franca in eastern Africa?
How did Yoruba develop a standard written form?
How did the Bantu expansion spread Niger-Congo languages across central and southern Africa?
How do floating tones affect pronunciation in Niger-Congo languages?
How do noun classes affect adjectives, determiners, numerals, pronouns, and verbs?
How does the Swahili sentence wa-tu wa-le wa-mefika show noun-class agreement?
How many distinct Niger-Congo languages are estimated to exist?
What contribution did Bishop Samuel Crowther make to written Yoruba?
What contribution did Sigismund W. Koelle make to the study of Niger-Congo languages?
What does the term Atlantic-Congo refer to in Niger-Congo classification?
What evidence suggests that Proto-Niger-Congo had a noun class system?
What is down-step in the tone systems of Niger-Congo languages?
Where are Edoid languages spoken in Nigeria?
Where are Igboid languages spoken?
Where are Kainji and Platoid languages spoken in Nigeria?
Where did Kay Williamson place the likely homeland of the Benue-Congo languages?
Where in Africa are Niger-Congo languages spoken?
Where is Lingala widely used as a lingua franca?
Which Cross River languages have the most speakers?
Which Niger-Congo branch has the largest number of languages and speakers?
Which Niger-Congo language appeared in the first extant book written in an African language?
Which Nupoid languages have the greatest numbers of speakers?
Which dialects helped form the emerging standard written Igbo?
Which languages belong to the Yoruboid cluster of the Defoid group?
Which nine major branches make up the Niger-Congo language family?
Who first called the language family Niger-Congo?
Who wrote the first known grammar of an African language?
Why are Niger-Congo languages named after the Niger and Congo rivers?
Why can noun class membership not usually be predicted from a noun’s meaning?
Why did Greenberg reject classifications based only on typological similarities?
Why did missionaries play an important role in documenting Niger-Congo languages?
Why is the region of eastern Nigeria and Cameroon linguistically fragmented?
Why was a standard written form of Igbo slow to develop?
When did science begin?
Where was science invented?

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External Websites

Verb serialization

in Niger-Congo languages in

Widespread characteristics of Niger-Congo languages

Also known as: Western Sudanic languages

Written by

John T. Bendor-Samuel

Executive Director, Summer Institute of Linguistics Ltd., High Wycombe, England. Editor of The Niger-Congo Languages: A Classification and Description of Africa's Largest Language Family.

John T. Bendor-Samuel

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Britannica Editors

Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....

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History

In many Niger-Congo languages a number of verbal constructions that share the same subject and the same tense/aspect/polarity features follow one another without conjunctions. In some languages the first verb is marked for tense/aspect/polarity and succeeding verbs are unmarked. In other languages the first verb carries the primary markers for tense/aspect/polarity, while the subsequent verbs are marked to show they are following the first verb.

John T. Bendor-Samuel