Benue-Congo

   

The Benue-Congo group of languages constitutes the largest branch of the Niger-Congo language family, both in terms of sheer number of languages, of which 938 are known (not counting mere dialects), and in terms of speakers, numbering perhaps 550 million.

The main subgroupings of the Benue-Congo family, along with the most important languages in terms of number of speakers, are as follows (with number of constituent languages for each sub-branch in parenthesis):

  • Akpes (1)
  • Bantoid (668)
    • Tivoid (17)
      • Tiv
  • Cross River (68)
  • Defoid (16)
  • Edoid (27)
    • Edo
  • Idomoid (9)
    • Idoma
  • Igboid (7)
  • Kainji (57)
  • Nupoid (12)
    • Nupe
  • Oko (1)
  • Platoid (46)
    • Berom
  • Ukaan (1)

External links

Ethnologue report for the Benue-Congo language family (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=21)

Web resources for the Benue-Congo languages (http://www.african.gu.se/webresources/benuecongo.html)


Retrieved from "http://www.centipedia.com/articles/Benue-Congo"

This page has been accessed 59 times. This page was last modified 13:51, 31 Aug 2004. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (see Copyrights for details).