Ubangian languages

Language family mainly of the Central African Republic

The Ubangian languages form a diverse linkage of some seventy languages centered on the Central African Republic and the DR Congo. They are the predominant languages of the CAR, spoken by 2–3 million people, including one of its official languages, Sango. They are also spoken in Cameroon, Chad, the Republic of Congo and South Sudan.

External classification

Joseph Greenberg (1963) classified the then-little-known Ubangian languages as Niger–Congo and placed them within the Adamawa languages as "Eastern Adamawa". They were soon removed to a separate branch of Niger–Congo, for example within Blench's Savanna languages.^[1] However, this has become increasingly uncertain, and Dimmendaal (2008) states that, based on the lack of convincing evidence for a Niger–Congo classification ever being produced, Ubangian "probably constitutes an independent language family that cannot or can no longer be shown to be related to Niger–Congo (or any other family)."^[2] Blench (2012) includes Ubangian within Niger–Congo.^[3] Güldemann (2018) notes that although evidence for the inclusion of Ubangi within Niger-Congo is still weak, the same also applies to many other branches which are uncontested members of Niger-Congo.^[4]

Internal classification

Boyd and Moñino (2010) removed the Gbaya and Zande languages.^[5] The half dozen remaining branches are coherent, but their interrelationships are not straightforward. Williamson & Blench (2000) propose the following arrangement:

• Ubangian
  • Banda
  • Ngbandi (Sango, with 2 million speakers total, is Ngbandi-based)
  • Sere–Mba
    • Sere
    • Ngbaka–Mba
      • Ngbaka (note the principal Gbaya language is also called Ngbaka)
      • Mba

In addition, there is the Ngombe language, whose placement is uncertain due to a paucity of data.

Note: The ambiguous name Ngbaka is used for various languages in the area. Generally, singular Ngbaka language refers to one of the main Gbaya languages, whereas plural Ngbaka languages refers to a branch of Ubangian.

Güldemann (2018)

Güldemann (2018) recognises seven coherent "genealogical units" within Ubangian, but is agnostic about their positions within Niger–Congo.^[4]

• Gbayaic
• Zandic
• Mbaic
• Mundu-Baka
• Ngbandic
• Bandaic
• Ndogoic

Comparative vocabulary

Sample basic vocabulary of Ubangian languages from Moñino (1988):^[6]

Numerals

Comparison of numerals in individual languages:^[7]

References

1. Williamson, Kay; Blench, Roger (2000). "Niger–Congo". In Heine, Bernd; Nurse, Derek (eds.). African languages: an introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2. Dimmendaal, Gerrit (2008). "Language Ecology and Linguistic Diversity on the African Continent". Language and Linguistics Compass. 2 (5): 841. doi:10.1111/j.1749-818X.2008.00085.x.
3. Blench, Roger. "Niger-Congo: an alternative view" (PDF).
4. Güldemann, Tom (2018). "Historical linguistics and genealogical language classification in Africa". In Güldemann, Tom (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of Africa. The World of Linguistics series. Vol. 11. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 58–444. doi:10.1515/9783110421668-002. ISBN 978-3-11-042606-9. S2CID 133888593.
5. Moñino, Yves (2010). "The position of Gbaya-Manza-Ngbaka group among the Niger-Congo languages". Archived from the original on 2014-01-08.
6. Moñino, Yves (1988). Lexique comparatif des langues oubanguiennes. Paris: Geuthner.
7. Chan, Eugene (2019). "The Niger-Congo Language Phylum". Numeral Systems of the World's Languages.