and Khoisan. Until several hundred years ago most African
languages lacked a written tradition or archaeological support
that would indicate time; nevertheless, it has been assumed
that they have been present in Africa since ancient times.
Th e exceptions to this assumption are the Semitic languages
of the Afro-Asiatic group and Nubian, the only language in
the Nilo-Saharan group with an ancient script derived from
Coptic. Th ese languages fi t into the time frame of antiquity
by evidence of their written traditions. Th e Semitic languages
in question are ancient Egyptian (the language of hiero-
glyphs), Coptic, Amharic, and Tigrinya. Arabic is an uncer-
tain member of this group. It made its presence with written
documentation during the seventh and eighth centuries c.e.
with the Muslim conquest of North Africa. It is assumed that
the language may have been spoken in North Africa prior to
Islamization.
Afro-Asiatic covers Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia,
northern Nigeria, Niger, and the North African countries of
Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Tunisia, Alge-
ria, and Morocco are collectively called Maghreb, meaning
“west” in Arabic. Some of the major languages in this division
include Somali in Somalia, Amharic in Ethiopia, Tigrinya in
Ethiopia and Eritrea, Hausa in northern Nigeria, Arabic in
North Africa, and Berber in the Maghreb. Th e largest group-
ing within Afro-Asiatic is the Semitic subgroup that extends
beyond Africa into the Middle East and the Arabian Penin-
sula where Arabic and Hebrew have remained current since
antiquity. Semitic includes ancient Egyptian, of which Coptic
is the most recent evolution, now used only in parts of the
Coptic Orthodox Church mass. Th e word Copt, “qubt” in
Arabic, is etymologically the root of the word Egypt. Th us,
one can appreciate the term Afro-Asiatic for the entire group
of languages under this rubric.
Niger-Congo covers the countries collectively referred to
as sub-Saharan Africa. Interestingly, the next three divisions
are geographically embedded within this vast area. Th e term
Niger-Congo was fi rst coined and the subgroupings within it
were explicitly established by Joseph H. Greenberg in a series
of articles and books from 1949 to 1966. Th ere were others,
of course, both before and aft er Greenberg who contributed
to what has emerged as the widely accepted distinct division
called Niger-Congo. A look at a map of sub-Saharan Africa
will show that the Niger River with its diverse tributaries cov-
ers much of sub-Saharan western Africa. Similarly, the Congo
River is the most extensive in subequatorial Africa; hence the
name Niger-Congo.
Th e Niger-Congo group is itself divided into six sub-
groups: West Atlantic, Mande, Gur (also called Voltaic
because of the Volta River), Kwa, Benue-Congo, and Ad-
amawa-Ubangi. Th e most common languages under these
subgroups are Wolof, Fula (also known as Fulani, Fulfulde,
Pular, and Pulaar), Mandinka (also known as Mandingo,
Manding, Maninka, and Madinka) under West Atlantic;
Bambara (also known as Bamanankan) under Mande; Moore
and Kabyle under Gur; Akan, Ewe, Yoruba, and Ibo (also
spelled Igbo) under Kwa; and Efi k under Benue-Congo.
Th e Benue-Congo subgroup is especially signifi cant
because it is through this subgroup that sub-Saharan west-
ern African and subequatorial African languages have been
shown to be typologically and, to a certain extent, lexically
related. Th e subequatorial languages within this subgroup
are collectively known as Bantu. Th e word Bantu means
“people,” and the root -ntu is the most commonly, if not uni-
versally, shared lexical item in the Bantu grouping.
Efi k in southeastern Nigeria is notable. Historically the
languages generally spoken in the adjacent areas between
southeastern Nigeria and southwestern Cameroon have been
called Bantoid or semi-Bantu because of typological and
lexical similarities with both Bantu and sub-Saharan western
African languages. Th e Bantu languages, despite their sub-
subgroup status, cover the largest amount of territory and
probably have the largest number of speakers. Th e most com-
monly recognized languages in the Bantu grouping are Swa-
hili in East Africa and central Africa, Kikuyu (also spelled
as Gikuyu) in Kenya, Shona in Zimbabwe and central Mo-
zambique, Zulu and Xhosa in South Africa, and Tswana (also
spelled Setswana) in Botswana.
Nilo-Saharan covers southern Sudan, northern Uganda,
the western side of Lake Victoria, and the central border areas
of Kenya and Tanzania. Commonly known speakers within
this division are the Dinka of southern Sudan, the Acholi of
northern Uganda, the Luo of Kenya, and the Massai on the
border of Kenya and Tanzania. Historically, the most promi-
nent speakers of a Nilo-Saharan language are Nubians in
southern Egypt and northern Sudan.
Th e Khoisan are spread over a large territorial space cov-
ering parts of Namibia and South Africa. Th ey are known in
popular literature as the “Bushmen.” Statistics on the num-Sandstone off ering table with Meroitic cursive inscription around
the edges, from Faras, Sudan (fi rst to second centuries c.e.) (© Th e
Trustees of the British Museum)
610 language: Africa