| Ubangian | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
Central African Republic, Cameroon, Gabon, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan |
| Genetic classification: |
perhaps Niger-Congo, perhaps an independent family |
| Subdivisions: | |
The Ubangian languages form a fairly close-knit language family of some seventy languages centered on the Central African Republic. They are the predominant languages of the CAR, spoken by 2–3 million people, and include the national language, Sango.
Although the family is clear-cut, and consists of half a dozen coherent branches, the interrelationships of these branches are not so straightforward. Williamson & Blench (2000) have the following:
| Ubangian |
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Ethnologue agrees on the Sere-Mba node, and calls the Gbaya languages "Gbaya-Manza-Ngbaka".
Classification
Greenberg (1963) classified the then-little known Ubangian languages as Niger-Congo and placed them within the Adamawa languages as "Eastern Adamawa". They were soon removed to a separate branch of Niger-Congo, for example within Blench's Savanna languages. However, this has become increasingly uncertain, and Dimmendaal (2008) states that, based on the lack of convincing evidence ever being produced, Ubangian "probably constitutes an independent language family that cannot or can no longer be shown to be related to Niger-Congo (or any other family)."[1]
References
- ^ Gerrit Dimmendaal (2008) "Language Ecology and Linguistic Diversity on the African Continent", Language and Linguistics Compass 2/5:841.
- Williamson, Kay & Blench, Roger (2000) 'Niger-Congo', in Heine, Bernd & Nurse, Derek (eds.) African languages: an introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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