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Bantu languages are spoken in South Cameroon, in Gabon, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Angola, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, NamibiaThe Republic of Namibia is a country in southwest Africa, on the Atlantic coast. It is bordered by Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east, and South Africa to the south. It gained independence in 1990, and as such it is one of the youngest n, BotswanaThe Republic of Botswana Lefatshe la Botswana is a landlocked nation of southern Africa. Formerly the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, Botswana adopted its new name after becoming independent on September 30, 1966. It is bordered by South Africa to t and South AfricaSouth Africa is a republic at the southern tip of Africa. It is bordered to the north by Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, to the north-east by Mozambique and Swaziland. Lesotho is contained entirely inside the borders of South Africa. South Africa is one o. This wide expansion makes the Bantu family the most widespread language family in AfricaAfrica is the world's second-largest continent in both area and population, after Asia. 30,244,050 km2 (11,677,240 mi2) including the islands, it covers 20. 3% of the total land area on Earth, and with over 800 million human inhabitants it accounts for ar, with about 310 million speakers.
The word Bantu was first used by Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel Bleek ( 1827Events February 20 Battle of Huzaingo February 28 The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad is incorporated, becoming the first railroad offering commercial transportation of both people and freight. March 7 Ellen Turner is abducted The Shrigley Abduction case begins- 1875Events January 12 Kwang-su becomes emperor of China. February 27 Newton Booth, 11th Governor of California resigns, having been elected Senator. Lieutenant Governor of California Romualdo Pacheco becomes acting Governor. He is later replaced by elected go) with the meaning people as this is reflected in many of the languages of this group. A characteristic of Bantu languages is that they use -ntu to refer to a man. ba is a plural in some dialects, becoming ba-ntu. He and later Carl MeinhofCarl Friedrich Michael Meinhof ( July 23, 1857- February 11, 1944) was a German linguist. He did comparative grammar studies of the Bantu languages. In 1905 he became professor at the School of Oriental Studies in Berlin. Reference: Meinhof, C 1948 (1st e did comparative studies of the Bantu language grammars.
The language family has hundreds of members. They have been classified by Malcolm Guthrie in 1971 into groups according to geographical zones - A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, K, L, M, N, P, R and S and then numbered within the group. (List of Bantu Language Names with synonyms ordered by Guthrie number). Guthrie also reconstructed Proto-Bantu as the Proto-language of this language family.
The most prominent grammatical characteristic of Bantu languages is the extensive use of prefixes (see Sesotho language). Each noun belongs to a class, and each language may have about ten classes all together, somewhat like genders in European languages. The class is indicated by a prefix on the noun, as well as on adjectives and verbs agreeing with it. Plural is indicated by a change of prefix.
The verb has a number of prefixes. In Swahili for example Mtoto mdogo amekisoma means 'The small child has read it [a book]'. Mtoto 'child' governs the adjective prefix m- and the verb subject prefix a-. Then comes perfect tense -me- and an object marker -ki- agreeing with implicit kitabu 'book'. Pluralizing to children makes it Watoto wadogo wamekisoma, and pluralizing to books (vitabu) makes it Watoto wadogo wamevisoma.
The Bantu language with the largest number of speakers is Swahili (G 40). Judging from the history of Swahili, some linguists believe that Bantu languages are on a continuum from purely tonal languages to languages with no tone at all.
Other important Bantu languages include:
Some are usually known in English without the class prefix (Swahili for Kiswahili, Zulu for isiZulu, etc.), and some others vary (Setswana or Tswana, Sindebele or Ndebele, etc.). But the bare form typically does not occur in the language: in the country of Botswana the people are the Batswana, one person is a Motswana, and the language is Setswana.
Today most linguist see the center of the Bantu expansion, that started about 2000 years before present in eastern Nigeria and Cameroon.
Black-African South Africans were at times officially called "Bantus" by the apartheid regime.