The Kongo languages are a clade of Bantu languages, coded Zone H.10 in Guthrie's classification, that are spoken by the Bakongo:

Kongo
Kikongo
Linguistic classificationNiger–Congo?
Glottologkiko1235
Map of the area where Kongo and Kituba as the lingua franca are spoken.
Beembe (Pangwa, Doondo, Kamba, Hangala), Ndingi, Kunyi, Mboka, Kongo, Western Kongo, Laari (Laadi), Vili, Yombe, Suundi

Languages edit

Glottolog, based on Koen Bostoen (2018, 2019),[1][2][3] classifies two dozen languages of the Kongo language cluster as follows:


These are closest to Mbuun, Ngongo and Nsong-Mpiin.[4]

References edit

  1. ^ Bostoen, Koen; de Schryver, Gilles-Maurice (2018). "Seventeenth-century Kikongo is not the ancestor of present-day Kikongo". In Bostoen, Koen; Brinkman, Inge (eds.). The Kongo kingdom: the origins, dynamics and cosmopolitan culture of an African polity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 60–102.
  2. ^ Bostoen, Koen; de Schryver, Gilles-Maurice (2018). "Langues et évolution linguistique dans le royaume et l'aire kongo". In Clist, Bernard-Olivier; de Maret, Pierre; Bostoen, Koen (eds.). Une archéologie des provinces septentrionales du royaume Kongo. Oxford: Archaeopress. pp. 51–55.
  3. ^ Pacchiarotti, Sara; Chousou-Polydouri, Natalia; Bostoen, Koen (2019). "Untangling the West-Coastal Bantu mess: identification, geography and phylogeny of the Bantu B50-80 languages". Africana Linguistica. 21: 87–162.
  4. ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "KLC Extended". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.