18 Facts About Niger-Congo languages

Niger-Congo languages is a hypothetical language family spoken over the majority of sub-Saharan Africa.

One of the most distinctive characteristics common to Atlantic-Congo Niger-Congo languages is the use of a noun-class system, which is essentially a gender system with multiple genders.

Similar classifications to Niger-Congo languages have been made ever since Diedrich Westermann in 1922.

However, there has been active debate for many decades over the appropriate subclassifications of the Niger-Congo languages in this language family, which is a key tool used in localising a language's place of origin.

Various Kordofanian Niger-Congo languages are spoken in south-central Sudan, around the Nuba Mountains.

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Katla and Rashad Niger-Congo languages show isoglosses with Benue-Congo that the other families lack.

Some authors saw the latter as Niger-Congo languages which had not yet completely evolved to full Bantu status, whereas others regarded them as Niger-Congo languages which had partly lost original features still found in Bantu.

In other words, all Niger-Congo languages are equal, but Bantu languages are “more equal” than the others.

Niger-Congo languages's evidence was mainly based on the uncertainty in the classification of Songhay, morphological resemblances, and lexical similarities.

Niger–Congo Niger-Congo languages have a clear preference for open syllables of the type CV .

The typical word structure of Proto-Niger-Congo languages is thought to have been CVCV, a structure still attested in, for example, Bantu, Mande and Ijoid - in many other branches this structure has been reduced through phonological change.

Several branches of Niger-Congo languages have a regular phonological contrast between two classes of consonants.

Fact that ten vowels have been reconstructed for proto-Ijoid has led to the hypothesis that the original vowel inventory of Niger-Congo languages was a full ten-vowel system.

Only a few Niger–Congo Niger-Congo languages are non-tonal; Swahili is perhaps the best known, but within the Atlantic branch some others are found.

Proto-Niger-Congo languages is thought to have been a tone language with two contrastive levels.

Niger–Congo Niger-Congo languages are known for their system of noun classification, traces of which can be found in every branch of the family but Mande, Ijoid, Dogon, and the Katla and Rashad branches of Kordofanian.

Noun phrases in most Niger–Congo Niger-Congo languages are characteristically noun-initial, with adjectives, numerals, demonstratives and genitives all coming after the noun.

Also noteworthy in these Niger-Congo languages is the prevalence of internally headed and correlative relative clauses, in both of which the head occurs inside the relative clause rather than the main clause.