Benue-Congo

Benue-Congo
Geographic distribution:	Subsaharan Africa, from Nigeria east and south
Genetic classification:	Niger-Congo  Atlantic-Congo   Benue-Congo
Subdivisions:	Bantoid Cross River Dakoid Jukunoid Kainji Plateau ? Ukaan ?
Some important branches of the Volta-Niger and Benue-Congo families are concentrated in Nigeria, Cameroon, and Benin.

The Benue-Congo group of languages constitutes the largest branch of the Niger-Congo language family, both in terms of sheer number of languages, of which Ethnologue (2009) counts 900, and in terms of speakers, numbering perhaps 500 million. Within Niger-Congo, Benue-Congo is a branch of Atlantic-Congo, and perhaps also Volta-Congo if that turns out to be a valid group. When it was first proposed by Joseph Greenberg (1963) it included the Volta-Niger languages; the boundary with those languages and with Kwa has been repeatedly debated.

The branches of the Benue-Congo family, along with the number of constituent languages, are thought to be as follows:

• Bantoid (≈700)
• Dakoid (4)
• Cross River (68)
• Jukunoid (20)
• Plateau (46)
• Kainji (58)

The original Plateau grouping was a geographic rather than genealogical group, though the languages listed here as Plateau may form a valid family.

Ukaan is also related to Benue-Congo; Roger Blench suspects it may be either the most divergent language (East) Benue-Congo language, or the closest relative to Benue-Congo.

Fali of Baissa may also be Benue-Congo, but is otherwise unclassified.

References

• Wolf, Paul Polydoor de (1971) The Noun Class System of Proto-Benue-Congo (Thesis, Leiden University). The Hague/Paris: Mouton.
• Williamson, Kay (1989) 'Benue-Congo Overview', pp. 248—274 in Bendor-Samuel, John & Rhonda L. Hartell (eds.) The Niger-Congo Languages — A classification and description of Africa's largest language family. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America.

Wikimedia

• Systematic graphic of the Niger-Congo languages with numbers of speakers

External links

• Ethnologue report for the Benue-Congo language family
• Web resources for the Benue-Congo languages

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