Niger-Congo

American  

[nahy-jer-kong-goh] / ˈnaɪ dʒərˈkɒŋ goʊ /

noun

1. a subfamily of Niger-Kordofanian, that comprises a large number of languages of Africa, as Ewe, Ibo, Yoruba, and the Bantu languages, spoken in nearly all of the equatorial forest region and in much of southern Africa.

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adjective

1. of, belonging to, or constituting Niger-Congo.

Niger-Congo British  

noun

1. a family of languages of Africa consisting of the Bantu languages together with most of the languages of the coastal regions of West Africa. The chief branches are Benue-Congo (including Bantu), Kwa, Mande, and West Atlantic

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adjective

1. relating to or belonging to this family of languages

Example Sentences

It describes a large and geographically widespread subfamily of African languages that make up part of the larger Niger-Congo language family.

From Textbooks • Apr. 19, 2023

Certainly, by 3000 BCE, the Niger-Congo peoples of West Africa were actively clearing land with stone tools to plant crops such as yams, the oil palm, peas, and groundnuts.

From Textbooks • Apr. 19, 2023

There, the domestication of yams by the Niger-Congo peoples developed gradually and likely in a piecemeal fashion beginning possibly around the same time the Nilo-Saharans of the eastern Sahara were adopting agriculture.

From Textbooks • Apr. 19, 2023

Niger-Congo accents, there’s a … the effort of it is much more of a carve.

From Slate • Feb. 21, 2018

Since all other Niger-Congo speakers, as well as the Bantu, are blacks, we couldn’t have inferred who migrated in which direction just from the evidence of physical anthropology.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond