Bantu 
A group of over 400 closely related languages spoken in central, east-central, and southern Africa, belonging to the South Central subgroup of the Niger-Congo language family and including Swahili, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Zulu, and Xhosa.
The Bantu languages (technically Narrow Bantu languages) constitute a grouping belonging to the Niger-Congo family. This grouping is deep down in the genealogical tree of the Bantoid grouping, which in turn is deep down in the Niger-Congo tree. By one estimate, there are 513 languages in the Bantu grouping, 681 languages in Bantoid, and 1,514 in Niger-Congo.[1] Bantu languages are spoken largely east and south of the present day nation of Nigeria; i.e., in the regions commonly known as central Africa, east Africa, and southern Africa. Parts of this Bantu chunk of Africa also have languages from outside the Niger-Congo family (see map).

The word Bantu was first used by Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel Bleek (1827-1875) with the meaning 'people', as this is reflected in many of the languages of this group. A common characteristic of Bantu languages is that they use a stem form such as -ntu or -tu for 'person', and the plural prefix for people in many languages is ba-, together giving ba-ntu "people". Bleek, and later Carl Meinhof, pursued extensive comparative studies of Bantu language grammars.
The term 'narrow Bantu' was coined by the Benue-Congo Working Group to distinguish Bantu as recognized by Malcolm Guthrie in his seminal 1948 classification of the Bantu languages from Bantoid languages not recognized as Bantu by Guthrie (1948). In recent times, the distinctness of Narrow Bantu as opposed to the other Southern Bantoid groups has been called into doubt (cf. Piron 1995), but the term is still widely used.

There is no genealogical classification of the (Narrow) Bantu languages. The most widely used system, the alphanumeric coding system developed by Guthrie, is mainly areal. Based on reflexes of proto-Bantu tone patterns, zones A–C are grouped together as Northwest Bantu, and zones D–S as Central Bantu. At least two proposals for a detailed genetic classification to replace the Guthrie system were suggested around the turn of the century. The "Tervuren" proposal of Bastin, Coupez, and Mann suffers from inferior methodology (its reliance on the "lexicostatistic" method) and the SIL proposal suffers from failure of its creators to publish their methodology. The Guthrie system needs to be updated, e.g., by the addition of languages previously overlooked. The development of a rigorous genetic classification of many subdivisions of Niger-Congo, not just Bantu, is hampered by insufficient data.TONY YONG

The Guthrie, Tervuren, and SIL lists are compared side by side in Maho (2002)

The following is a short list of Bantu languages that may be relatively well known:

* in Central and Eastern Africa
o Chewa (Chichewa)
o Ganda (Luganda)
o Gikuyu
o Bemba
o Ekegusii
o Haya (Kihaya)
o Chaga (Kichaga)
o Rwanda (Kinyarwanda)
o Kongo (Kikongo)
o Kamba language
o Lingala
o Luhyia
o Soga (Lusoga)
o Mongo (Mongo-Nkundu, Lomongo)
o Ndowe
o Kiga (Rukiga)
o Rundi (Kirundi)
o Nyankole (Runyankole)
o Nyoro (Runyoro)
o Tooro (Rutooro)
o Swahili (Kiswahili)
o Tetela language (Congo)
o Luba (Tshiluba)
o Tumbuka (chiTumbuka)
o Yao (Chiyao)
o Gishu (Lugisu)

* in Southern Africa
o Oshiwambo (Oshiwambo)
o Ndebele (Sindebele)
o Pedi (Sepedi)
o Shona (chiShona)
o Swati (Siswati)
o Phuthi (Siphuthi)
o Sotho (Sesotho)
o Swazi (siSwati)
o Tsonga (Xitsonga)
o Tswana (Setswana)
o Venda (Tshivenda)
o Xhosa (isiXhosa)
o Zulu (isiZulu)

* in West Africa
o Basaa (in Cameroon)
o Duala (in Cameroon)
o Kako (in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo)
o Ngumba (in Cameroon)
o Beti (in Cameroon, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, São Tomé and Príncipe)

Most are known in English without the class prefix (Swahili, Tswana, Ndebele), but are sometimes used with the (language-specific) prefix (Kiswahili, Setswana, Sindebele). The bare (prefixless) form typically does not occur in the language itself. So, in the country of Botswana the people are the Batswana, 'one person' is a 'Motswana', and the language is 'Setswana'.

Today most Bantu linguists would regard the southwards migration, or Bantu expansion, that started about 2000 years before present as originating in the region of eastern Nigeria or Cameroon.
Dictionary:  

Language Family Tree
Niger-Congo, Atlantic-Congo, Volta-Congo,
Benue-Congo, Bantoid, Southern, Narrow Bantu
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90101

Archive for the ‘Africa’ Category
http://wycliffe.org.uk/blog/?cat=7