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Niger–Congo is a hypothetical language family spoken over the majority of sub-Saharan Africa. It unites the Mande languages,the Atlantic–Congo languages,and possibly several smaller groups of languages that are difficult to classify. If valid,Niger–Congo would be the world's largest in terms of member languages,the third-largest in terms of speakers,and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area. It is generally considered to be the world's largest language family in terms of the number of distinct languages,just ahead of Austronesian,although this is complicated by the ambiguity about what constitutes a distinct language;the number of named Niger–Congo languages listed by Ethnologue is 1,540.
The West Atlantic languages of West Africa are a major subgroup of the Niger–Congo languages.
The Adamawa languages are a putative family of 80–90 languages scattered across the Adamawa Plateau in Central Africa,in northern Cameroon,north-western Central African Republic,southern Chad,and eastern Nigeria,spoken altogether by only one and a half million people. Joseph Greenberg classified them as one branch of the Adamawa–Ubangi family of Niger–Congo languages. They are among the least studied languages in Africa,and include many endangered languages;by far the largest is Mumuye,with 400,000 speakers. A couple of unclassified languages—notably Laal and Jalaa—are found along the fringes of the Adamawa area.
The Atlantic–Congo languages comprise the largest demonstrated family of languages in Africa. They have characteristic noun class systems and form the core of the Niger–Congo family hypothesis. They comprise all of Niger–Congo apart from Mande,Dogon,Ijoid,Siamou,Kru,the Katla and Rashad languages,and perhaps some or all of the Ubangian languages. Hans Gunther Mukanovsky's "Western Nigritic" corresponded roughly to modern Atlantic–Congo.
Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales,abbreviated as INALCO,is a French Grand Etablissement with a specializing in the teaching of languages and cultures from the world. Its coverage spans languages of Central Europe,Africa,Asia,America,and Oceania. With 104 languages taught as of 2024,this institution is currently the world's largest provider of language training courses.
Mathieu Guidere is a full professor at the University of Paris and Research director at the French National Institute of Health (INSERM). A scholar of Linguistics and Translation studies,he has held other professorships at prestigious institutions including the University of Geneva,Switzerland. Guidere is also the founder of the Swiss MIM Multilingual International Mediators Non-governmental organization (NGO). He has been awarded a Fulbright Prize to advance his research on the psychology of terrorism. He has also been the editor-in-chief of the French Journal of Languages' Professors,Les Langues Modernes. In 2015,he was also Team Leader of the European Union CVE Program in the Sub-Saharan Region. In 2017,he was also the UNOWAS Senior Expert in West Africa and the Sahel Region.
The Volta–Niger family of languages,also known as West Benue–Congo or East Kwa,is one of the branches of the Niger–Congo language family,with perhaps 70 million speakers. Among these are the most important languages of southern Nigeria,Benin,Togo,and southeast Ghana:Yoruba,Igbo,Bini,and Gbe.
The Senegambian languages,traditionally known as the Northern West Atlantic,or in more recent literature sometimes confusingly as the Atlantic languages,are a branch of Atlantic–Congo languages centered on Senegal,with most languages spoken there and in neighboring southern Mauritania,Gambia,Guinea-Bissau,and Guinea. The transhumant Fula,however,have spread with their languages from Senegal across the western and central Sahel. The most populous unitary language is Wolof,the national language of Senegal,with four million native speakers and millions more second-language users. There are perhaps 13 million speakers of the various varieties of Fula,and over a million speakers of Serer. The most prominent feature of the Senegambian languages is that they are devoid of tone,unlike the vast majority of Atlantic-Congo languages.
The Bongo–Bagirmi or Sara–Bongo–Bagirmi (SBB) languages are the major branch of the Central Sudanic language family with about forty languages. Principal groups include Bagirmi languages such as Naba and the Sara languages. They are spoken across CAR,Chad,South Sudan,Sudan and adjacent countries.
Bijago or Bidyogo is the language of the Bissagos Archipelago of Guinea-Bissau. There are some difficulties of grammar and intelligibility between dialects,with the Kamona dialect being unintelligible to the others.
The Bak languages are a group of typologically Atlantic languages of Senegal and Guinea-Bissau linked in 2010 to the erstwhile Atlantic isolate Bijago. Bak languages are non-tonal.
Sua,also known by other ethnic groups as Mansoanka or Kunante,is a divergent Niger–Congo language spoken in the Mansôa area of Guinea-Bissau.
Nalu is an Atlantic language of Guinea and Guinea-Bissau,spoken by the Nalu people,a West African people who settled the region before the arrival of the Mandinka in the 14th or 15th centuries. It is spoken predominantly by adults. It is estimated to be spoken by a range of 10,000 to 25,000 people,whereas Wilson (2007) reports that there are around 12,000 speakers. It is considered an endangered language due to its dwindling population of speakers.
Françoise Ozanne-Rivierre (1941–2007) was a French linguist based at LACITO–CNRS,internationally known for her work on the languages of New Caledonia.
Maurice Gross was a French linguist and scholar of Romance languages. Beginning in the late 1960s he developed Lexicon-Grammar,a method of formal description of languages with practical applications.
Gilbert Lazard was a French linguist and Iranologist. His works include the study of various Iranian languages,translations of classical Persian poetry,and research on linguistic typology,notably on morphosyntactic alignment. He also studied various Polynesian languages most notably the Tahitian language.
Annie Rialland is a French linguist who is Director of Research emerita of the CNRS Laboratory of Phonetics and Phonology (Paris). Her main domains of expertise are phonetics,phonology,prosody,and African languages.
Konstantin Igorevich Pozdniakov is a Russian-French linguist who works on the comparative-historical linguistics of the Mande,Atlantic,and Niger-Congo families. He also works on Rongorongo of Easter Island.
Éva Buchi is a Swiss linguist and lexicographer specializing in the Romance languages.
Martine Vanhove is a French linguist,Research Director emerita at LLACAN (CNRS),specializing in Cushitic and Semitic languages spoken in Djibouti,Yemen and Malta.
References
- ↑ "Guillaume Segerer" . Retrieved 2023-12-03.
- ↑ Pozdniakov, Konstantin & Segerer, Guillaume (2017). "A Genealogical classification of Atlantic languages." [ permanent dead link ] (Draft) To appear in: Lüpke, Friederike (ed.) The Oxford guide to the Atlantic languages of West Africa: Oxford:Oxford University Press.
- ↑ Segerer, Guillaume (2000). Description de la langue bijogo (Guinée Bissau) (Thesis). Paris: Sorbonne Nouvelle University Paris 3.
- ↑ "ORCID". ORCID. 2023-10-31. Retrieved 2023-12-03.
- ↑ "Guillaume Segerer". LLACAN (in French). Retrieved 2023-12-03.
- ↑ "Linguistics". Guillaume Segerer. 2009-07-25. Retrieved 2023-12-03.
- ↑ "Reference Lexicon". RefLex. 2023-06-20. Retrieved 2023-12-03.
- ↑ "Web-Ball". RefLex. 2023-06-20.
- ↑ "Web-Cal". RefLex. 2023-06-20.
