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Benue–Congo
East Benue–Congo
Geographic distribution	Africa, from Nigeria eastwards and southwards
Linguistic classification	Niger–Congo? Atlantic–Congo Volta–Congo Benue–Congo
Subdivisions	Bantoid Cross River Defoid Jukunoid Kainji Plateau Ukaan Fali of Baissa Tita
Language codes
Glottolog	benu1247
The Benue–Congo languages shown within the Niger–Congo language family. Non-Benue–Congo languages are greyscale.

Benue–Congo (sometimes called East Benue–Congo) is a major branch of the Volta-Congo languages which covers most of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Subdivisions

Central Nigerian (or Platoid) contains the Plateau, Jukunoid and Kainji families, and Bantoid–Cross combines the Bantoid and Cross River groups.

Bantoid is only a collective term for every subfamily of Bantoid–Cross except Cross River, and this is no longer seen as forming a valid branch, however one of the subfamilies, Southern Bantoid, is still considered valid. It is Southern Bantoid which contains the Bantu languages, which are spoken across most of Sub-Saharan Africa. This makes Benue–Congo one of the largest subdivisions of the Niger–Congo language family, both in number of languages, of which Ethnologue counts 976 (2017), and in speakers, numbering perhaps 350 million. Benue–Congo also includes a few minor isolates in the Nigeria–Cameroon region, but their exact relationship is uncertain.

The neighbouring Volta–Niger branch of Nigeria and Benin is sometimes called "West Benue–Congo", but it does not form a united branch with Benue–Congo. When Benue–Congo was first proposed by Joseph Greenberg (1963), it included Volta–Niger (as West Benue–Congo); the boundary between Volta–Niger and Kwa has been repeatedly debated. Blench (2012) states that if Benue–Congo is taken to be "the noun-class languages east and north of the Niger", it is likely to be a valid group, though no demonstration of this has been made in print.

The branches of the Benue–Congo family are thought to be as follows:

• Bantoid–Cross languages
  • Cross River
  • Northern Bantoid
  • Southern Bantoid
• Central Nigerian languages, also known as Platoid
  • Jukunoid
  • Kainji
  • Plateau

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

Fali of Baissa and Tita are also Benue–Congo but are otherwise unclassified.

Branches and locations (Nigeria)

Below is a list of major Benue–Congo branches and their primary locations (centres of diversity) within Nigeria based on Blench (2019).

Comparative vocabulary

Sample basic vocabulary for reconstructed proto-languages of different Benue-Congo branches:

See also

• List of Proto-Benue-Congo reconstructions (Wiktionary)
• Systematic graphic of the Niger–Congo languages with numbers of speakers

References

1. Roger Blench, Niger-Congo: an alternative view Archived 2012-12-03 at the Wayback Machine
2. Watters JR (2018). Watters, John R (eds.). East Benue-Congo: Nouns, pronouns, and verbs (pdf). Berlin: Language Science Press. doi:10.5281/zenodo.1314306. ISBN 978-3-96110-100-9. Archived from the original on 2018-11-16. Retrieved 2018-11-15.
3. ^ Blench, Roger (2019). An Atlas of Nigerian Languages (4th ed.). Cambridge: Kay Williamson Educational Foundation.
4. de wolf, Paul. 1971. The Noun-Class System of Proto-Benue-Congo Archived 2023-11-11 at the Wayback Machine. Janua Linguarum. Series Practica 167. The Hague: Mouton.
5. Shimizu, Kiyoshi (1982). "Die Nord-Jos-Grüppe der Plateau-Sprachen Nigerias". Afrika und Übersee (in German). 65 (2): 161–210. ISSN 0002-0427.
6. Shimizu, Kiyoshi. 1980. Comparative Jukunoid, 3 vols. (Veröffentlichungen der Institute für Afrikanistik und Ägyptologie der Universität Wien 7–9. Beiträge zur Afrikanistik 5–7). Vienna: Afro-Pub.
7. ^ Gerhardt, Ludwig (1983). Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Sprachen des Nigerianischen Plateaus. Afrikanistische Forschungen (in German). Vol. 9. Glückstadt: J. J. Augustin. ISBN 3-87030-062-0.
8. Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. (1978). The Consonants of Proto-Upper Cross and their Implications for the Classification of the Upper Cross Languages (PhD). Leiden University. OCLC 37049861.
9. Connell, Bruce. n.d. Comparative Lower Cross wordlist Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine. Unpublished manuscript.
10. Blench, Roger and Kay Williamson. 2008. The Ogoni languages: comparative word list and historical reconstructions Archived 2020-08-05 at the Wayback Machine.
11. Hyman, L.M. 1979. Index of Proto-Grassfields Bantu roots Archived 2019-09-04 at the Wayback Machine. Ms. U.S.C.; CBOLD Archived 2011-09-15 at the Wayback Machine; accessed from Comparalex Archived 2020-08-15 at the Wayback Machine.
12. Paulin, Pascale. 1995. Etude comparative des langues du groupe Ring: langues Grassfields de l'ouest, Cameroun. MA thesis, Université Lumière Lyon 2.
13. Schadeberg, Thilo C. 2003. Historical linguistics. In Derek Nurse and Gérard Philippson (eds.), The Bantu languages. (Routledge language family series 4. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-700-71134-5

• 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.

External links

• ComparaLex, database with Benue-Congo word lists
• Web resources for the Benue–Congo languages
• Journal of West African Languages: Benue-Congo
• Proto-Benue-Congo Swadesh list Archived 2021-07-09 at the Wayback Machine (de Wolf 1971)

• Niger–Congo languages
• Benue–Congo languages
• Volta–Congo languages