BantuThis is a featured page

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  1. How many people speak bantu as their native language?
  2. how many language families were there and what are they?
Bantu
African Empire
What is Bantu?
Bantu - El Mundo Tarvin
'Bantu' is a generic name covering many black tribes. Bantu migration into South Africa began in the 3rd century AD with the occupation of the fertile eastern and coastal stretches of the country, where they came into contact with the Khoikhoi.
The Xhosa people are a Bantu tribe that settled along the south coast a thousand kilometers east of Cape Town. They encountered European and English settlers along their western border, the Great Fish River, from the seventeenth century onwards.

Their ability to resist Afrikaners encouraged the Great Trek away from the area.Labour migration of Xhosa to Cape Town began in the mid-eighteenth century and measures were taken to control the Black population. Nevertheless migration continued in the twentieth century and a township was created at Langa.

In the early twentieth century black people became more politicised in the face of discrimination.This discrimination became systematic and ruthless under the apartheid system, against which a long struggle ensued until liberation was achieved in the new South Africa.
bantu
The Dark yellow on the map is the area of people who speak the bantu langauge in Africa.

The Bantu and Other Developments in Eastern Africa, to 400 CE

Around 200 CE, Indonesians arrived by boat and settled in Madagascar. They brought with them a banana plant that had a higher yield than any African banana. The Asian banana was transplanted on the eastern coast of Africa, and it spread inland, improving the food supply. By now, Bantu speaking people had moved alongside hunter-gatherers in eastern Africa. They were spreading past Lake Ekerewe (today called Victoria) northeast to the Indian Ocean on the coast of what is today is Kenya. By the year 300, they spread to areas around Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi. And by the year 400 they arrived at the southern tip of the continent. The Bantu mixed with local hunter-gatherers. And working with iron created a greater productivity in agriculture. More people cut into forests and settled down into villages. New, primarily agricultural communities of Bantu speaking people developed, with women working in the fields and the men hunting for meat. And the Bantu speakers traded with neighboring hunter-gatherers, the Bantu giving iron tips for their weapons in exchange for killed game, medicinal plants or as payment for herding livestock.
Bantu Migration
There are more than 60 million people who speak Bantu as their native language. They live primarily in the regions that straddle the equator and continue southward into southern Africa where it is believed they migrated to. [an error occurred while processing this directive] It is believed that the Bantu origins lie in Cameroon. In about 1000 BC a massive migration began (considered one of the largest in human history). This migration continued until around the 3rd or 4th century AD.
Anthropologists have studied this phenomenon and believe there are several possibilities for its occurrence. It may have been due to a growing population in ancient times, which increased the need for more food. It was around this time that the banana, which is native to Asia, was introduced in southern Africa.
Bantu - El Mundo Tarvin
Another important occurrence in the history of the Bantu is a split that created two major language families. They are known as the Eastern Bantu and the Western Bantu. The Eastern Bantu migrated to Zimbabwe, Mozambique and down into South Africa. The Western Bantu migrated into Angola, Namibia, and parts of Botswana. Currently the Bantu are known more as a language group than as a distinct ethnic group. Swahili is the most widely spoken Bantu language and is considered the lingua franca of around 50 million people living in the countries along the east coast of Africa. The ethnic groups that make up the Eastern Bantu include the Xhosa, Zulu, Kikuyu, and Shona peoples. The Western Bantu include the Herero and Tonga peoples.

Bantu - El Mundo Tarvin
Location: The Bantu people make up about 2/3 of Africa's population, and inhabit the southern half of the continent.
Bantu - El Mundo Tarvin
Language: The Bantu are a group of people known more as a language group than as a distinct ethnic group. They speak related languages and have similar social characteristics. The Bantu are split into two major language families, the Eastern Bantu and the Western Bantu.

The most widely spoken Bantu-derived language is Swahili, which is used by up to 50 million speakers on the eastern coast of Africa. There are two ways in which Bantu languages are different from English, Spanish, French, German, or other European languages.

One is that you can stick markers onto a verb to indicate who's doing and receiving the action, so what would take a whole sentence in English only takes a single word in Swahili. The other is all nouns are marked as belonging to one of fifteen to twenty genders.
Bantu - El Mundo Tarvin
Most Bantu languages were unwritten. This changed when Europeans arrived. The first Europeans to have contact with the Bantu were usually priests or missionaries, so they were interested in translating the Bible and would write down the local language using whatever spelling conventions their own language used.

Bantu - El Mundo Tarvin
History: The Bantu originated in the north western area that they now occupy. Their migration throughout Africa is one of the largest migrations in human history. This migration began in about 1000 BC and continued until the 3rd or 4th century AD.

There is continued speculation about why they moved in the first place. One reason may be that overpopulation encouraged some groups to move away in order to practice agriculture.
Bantu - El Mundo Tarvin
Another could be that they were in search of fertile land. Or, the move may have been due to internal conflicts within their communities or external attacks by their neighbors.

The Bantu introduced many things into the areas they migrated to. They were an agricultural people and introduced crops such as millet and sorghum. They may also have introduced iron smelting and iron tools.

Bantu - El Mundo Tarvin
This is a hand shield made by the bantu.
Bantu languages group of African languages forming a subdivision of the Benue-Niger division of the Niger-Congo branch of the Niger-Kordofanian language family (see African languages ).

Bantu contains hundreds of languages that are spoken by 120 million Africans in the Congo Basin, Angola, the Republic of South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, and Kenya. The word Bantu means "the people" and is made up of the stem -ntu ( "person" ) and the plural prefix ba -.

The total number of Bantu languages is uncertain. The most important is Swahili (see Swahili language ), spoken as a first language by more than 30 million people, chiefly in Kenya, Tanzania, Congo (Kinshasa), and Uganda. As the chief trade language of E Africa, it is understood by perhaps an additional 20 million.
Bantu - El Mundo Tarvin
Other significant Bantu languages include Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, and Setswana, which are spoken respectively by 9 million, 7 million, 5 million, and 4 million persons, all living in South Africa, Lesotho, and Botswana; Makua and Thonga, the languages respectively of 4 million and 3 million people, chiefly in Mozambique; Bemba, the language of over 3 million in Zambia and Congo (Kinshasa); Shona, with 8 million speakers in Zimbabwe and Mozambique; Kikuyu, native to 6 million in Kenya; Ganda, the language of 4 million in Uganda; Ruanda, spoken by 8 million in Rwanda, Uganda, and Congo (Kinshasa); Rundi, the language of 6 million in Burundi and Congo (Kinshasa); Mbundu, native to 6 million in Angola; Luba, with 7 million speakers in Congo (Kinshasa); Kongo, the language of 4 million in Congo (Brazzaville), Congo (Kinshasa), and Angola; and Lingala, spoken by 6 million in Congo (Kinshasa).

All of the Bantu languages are tonal, except perhaps Swahili. Tones are used to indicate differences in meaning. Grammatically, nouns belong to a number of classes, each of which has its pair of prefixes, one to denote the singular and the other the plural. Linguists have not yet discovered a logical basis for most of the many different noun classes.

Although they are not based on sex, these classes have been compared to the genders of Indo-European tongues. The class prefix of a noun is attached to every word that is connected grammatically with this noun, whether adjective, verb, or other part of speech. The following example from Swahili illustrates the nature of such agreement: m-thu m-zuri, "handsome man," but wu-thu wu-zuri, "handsome men."

The Bantu verb consists of a stem to which are added one or more prefixes (with the exception of the imperative) and also one or more suffixes. The verbal suffixes relate to person, number, negation, tense, voice, and mood. Suffixes added to certain stems can form nouns and verbs, especially of a derivational nature.
Bantu - El Mundo Tarvin
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