Bantu

1. A member of any of a large number of linguistically related peoples of central and southern Africa.
2. A group of over 400 closely related languages spoken in central, east-central, and southern Africa, belonging to the South Central subgroup of the Niger-Congo language family and including Swahili, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Zulu, and Xhosa.

[From Proto-Bantu *bantu, people : *ba-, pl. human pref. + *-ntu, entity.]

The rich culture of the Bantu people of Africa, south of the Congo River, includes several hundred languages and many different religious traditions. At the height of the slave trade, Islam had spread into the remote interior of the Bantus' homeland, while Catholicism vied for control of the coast. Countless thousands of Bantus were captured by Muslim slavers. Then they were marched to the coasts, where Catholic priests, who wanted to ensure their salvation, baptized them. Finally, they were loaded into the holds of Protestant-owned ships from America. They were then taken to different points of destination to work as slaves for the remainder of their lives.

But whether they were taken to the cane fields of Cuba or the cotton plantations of Georgia, they placed their own unique brand of spirituality upon their culture. The Voodoo of Haiti and New Orleans, the Rastafarianism of Jamaica, the unique song form of the black American spiritual, the philosophies of the Black Muslims, the southern gospel tradition of Protestant worship-all owe their very existence to people who absorbed the religion of their persecutors but refused to surrender their unique spirituality.

In South Africa today, the term Bantu is used to refer to the indigenous African population that was subject to the policies of Apartheid, the strict segregation of the black and white populations.

Bantu may refer to:

• Bantu expansion, a series of migrations of Bantu speakers
• Bantu languages
• Bantu peoples, over 400 groups of people in Africa sharing a Bantu language
• Bantustan, designated land set aside for black Africans in South Africa during apartheid

BANTU may refer to:

• Black Association for Nationalism Through Unity, a youth activism group in the 1960s

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - bantufolket, bantustammen
adj. - bantu-

Nederlands (Dutch)
Bantoe (taal), Bantoe-

Français (French)
n. - (Ling) Bantou, Bantous
adj. - bantou

Deutsch (German)
n. - Bantu, (Negroide Gruppe in Mittel und Südafrika)
adj. - Bantu-

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - γλώσσα ή διάλεκτος μπαντού
adj. - της γλωσσικής ομάδας μπαντού

Italiano (Italian)
bantu

Português (Portuguese)
n. - língua (f) dos Bantos
adj. - banto

Русский (Russian)
банту

Español (Spanish)
n. - bantú
adj. - bantú, perteneciente a tribu africana

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - bantuspråk, medlem av ett bantufolk
adj. - bantu-

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
班图人, 班图语, 班图系的

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 班圖人, 班圖語
adj. - 班圖系的

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 반투족[어]
adj. - 반투족[어]의

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - バントゥー族, バントゥー語
adj. - バントゥー族の

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) شعوب البنتو او لغاتهم ( منهم الكفير والزولو) (صفه) ما يخص البنتو‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮באנטו (כושי), קבוצת שפות בחציה הדרומי של אפריקה‬
adj. - ‮באנטו (כושי)‬

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