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In the classification of African languages, Southern Bantoid (or South Bantoid) is one of the two branches of the Bantoid subfamily of the Niger-Congo phylum. Southern Bantoid, home to the well known and numerous Bantu subfamily, is comprised of 643 languages according to the Ethnologue, making it one of the largest subfamilies in terms of number of languages. The term African languages refers to the approximately 1800 languages spoken in Africa. ...
Map showing the distribution of Niger-Congo languages The Niger-Congo languages are probably the largest group of the world in terms of different languages. ...
Bantu is a language family that belongs to the Niger-Congo group. ...
The Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics), a Christian linguistic service organization which studies lesser-known languages primarily to provide the speakers with native language biblical texts. ...
Southern Bantoid was first introduced in Williamson (1989, based on work presented in Blench [1987]) in a proposal that divided Bantoid in North and South Bantoid. The uniformity of the North Bantoid group was called into question subsequently, but the work did establish Southern Bantoid as a valid genetic unit.
According to Williamson and Blench (2000:34–5), Southern Bantoid is divided into (Narrow) Bantu and the Jarawan, Tivoid, Beboid, and Wide Grassfields-Ekoid-Mbe-Nyang subfamilies.
References - Blench, Roger [1987] 'A new classification of Bantoid languages.' Unpublished paper presented at 17th Colloquium on African Languages and Linguistics, Leiden.
- Williamson, Kay (1989) 'Niger-Congo Overview'. In: The Niger-Congo languages, ed. by John Bendor-Samuel, 3–45. University Press of America.
- Williamson, Kay & Blench, Roger (2000) 'Niger-Congo', in Heine, Bernd and Nurse, Derek (eds) African Languages - An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University press, pp. 11—42.
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