A. C. JORDAN

Bantu Languages of Southern Africa

by

A. C. Jordan

The Bantu family of languages---well over 2000---covers almost the whole of the southern half of the continent of Africa, from the Gulf of Guinea inn the west to the mouth of the Tana River in the east. The term Bantu was first used as a linguistic term by Dr. W. H. I. Bleek in the middle of the 19th century for the whole family of languages in which the word for ‘people’ was ‘bantu’ or some modification thereof (e. g. catho, bandu, watu, athu, etc.), to distinguish it from the Hamitic, Dudanic and Semitic famil;ies on the one hand, and from the Khoi-Sen languages on the other. The Khoi-Khoin (so-called ‘Hottentots) and the Sen or Thwa (so-called “Bushmen’) constitute enclaves or ‘islands’ in the southern Bantu-speaking area.

In Southern Africa the Bantu language-family is represented by five different language-groups, each consisting of a number of mutually intelligible dialects, spoken by about 13,000,000 people in all.

 (1) The Nguni group includes Xhosa (mainly Cape Province), Zulu (mainly Natal) and Rhodesian Ndebele (radiating from Bulawayo district) as literary dialects. The non-literary dialects of this group include Swazi (mainly Swaziland), Transvaal Ndebele (Transvaal), Hlubi, Bhaca, Xesibe, Mpondo, etc. (north-eastern to south-eastern Cape), Lala and Qwabe (Natal).

(2) The Sotho group includes Southern Sotho (mainly Basutoland), Tswana (mainly Bechuanaland, Transvaal and Southern Free State), and Northern Sotho (Transvaal) as literary dialects. The non-literary dialects include Hurutshe and sub-dialects in Bechuanaland, and Koni, Tlokwa, etc., in the Transvaal.

(3) The Venda group has its home in the Transvaal. Its main dialects are Phani and Tsavhatsindi.

(4) The Tsonga group covers the people commonly known as ‘Shangaan’ in the Mozambique district of Portuguese East Africa, and is spoken in some parts of the Transvaal as well. It includes Ronga (around Lourenço Marques), Tonga (Transvaal) and Tswa (Transvaal) as literary dialects.

(5) The Shona group has its home in Rhodesia. It has six important sub-groups, viz.: Karanga (radiating from Fort Victoria; Zezuru radiating from the vicinity of Salisbury); Korekore (south of the Zambesi); Manyika (centring in Umtali); Ndau (Moçambique and Melsetter); and Kalanga (from Plumtree to Wankie). The first two are used as a basis for literary form.

In the sub-classification of the Bantu languages, the first four groups above belong to the south-eastern zone. The Shona group, which does not share the linguistic charactertistics that distinguish the southern-eastern zone from other Bantu language zones, belongs to the south central zone.

The Bantu languages have a simple, perfectly balanced vowel system. In each language there is a low vowel, a. and an equal number of front and back vowels. The vowel phonemes range from five to nine, the average being seven.

There are two semi-vowels, w and y.

The consonants include explosive as well as a few implosives.

A vowel may be short, medium, long or extra-long. In general the vowel in the penultimate syllable is long. Tone may be high, high-falling, high-rising, low, low-falling, low-rising, and has semantic significance, that is, two or more words, consisting of identical phonemes but differing in their intonation-patterns, have entirely different meanings. English content (satisfied, or that which is contained) more or less illustrates this.

The noun consists of a stem and a prefix. The nouns fall into a number of classes distinguished by their prefixes. There are classes indicating abstractions, verbal nouns, diminutives, augmentatives, locatives, etc. No less than twenty-three noun-class prefixes have been recorded, but no living Bantu language is known to possess all.

The majority of verb stems are disyllabic, e.g. Nguni bona, Sotho bona, Tsonga vona (see).

The noun is concord-governing. That is, in any expression, any word grammatically related to the noun bears a concord referring to that noun. The concord shows direct relationship to its noun-class prefix.

Since pronouns, qualificatives (i.e. adjectives, demonstratives, etc.) and predicatives are grammatically related to the noun, it follows that there are pronominal, qualificative and predicative concords. The last include subjectival and objectival concords.

In all the moods of the verb, infinitive, imperative, indicative, subjunctive and potential, the negative is formed by affixes and/or modifications of the verb-stem, e.g. Ngubi infinitive u kuhamba (to go), u kungahambi (not to go), subjunctive ahambe (that he may go), angahambi (that he may not go).

Besides verbs, copulatives including no verb at all may be used as predicatives. Copulatives express ideas of ‘being’. A copulative consists of a copula and a complement, e.g. Ngubi ndimkhulu, Sotho kemoholo (I am big, but literally ‘I big’); Nguni ngu mntu, Sotho ke motho (it is a person).

There are adjectival, enumerative, demonstrative, quantitative and possessive qualificatives. The adjectives are closely related to the nouns morphologically and semantically. The demonstratives have three or more positional types, indicating something near the speaker, something nearer the hearer than the speaker, and something remote from both speaker and hearer.

A possessive qualificative ordinarily follows the substantive it qualifies, e.g. Ngubi i sandal sam (my hand, literally ‘the hand of me’), Sotho bana baka (my children, literally ‘the children of me’).

The south-eastern Bantu languages are rich in traditional literature, both Prose and Verse. Narrative Prose includes myths and Legends, Fables and Tales, Proverbs and Riddles. Myths tell stories about the origin of things, creation, how animals acquired their tails. How death came into the world, etc. Legends are stories of heroes who championed the cause of man against ogres and other monsters. Fables are animal stories. The animals in these Fables have human attributes. They represent types of people. The Hare is usually the hero. The tales are mainly stories about ordinary folk. Verse includes Lyrical and Dramatic verse, Dance-songs, War-songs, Hunting-songs, etc. It also includes that remarkable genre known as the Praise-poem. Nguni and Sotho are particularly rich in Praise-poems.

Writing began about the middle of the 19th century, with Nguni and Sotho. Both have a fair amount of literature today, including some good translations of English classics. Chief of these is The Pilgrim’s Progress. The most famous original work so far is the Southern Sotho historical romance, Chaka, by Thomas Mofolo. This has been translated into several European languages, including English, French and German. Xhosa writers, in particular, have made a remarkable contribution to Christian worship not only by translations of famous hymns, but by their own compositions. The best-known poets are S. E. K. Mqhayi (Xhosa), who died in 1945, and B. Wallet Vilakazi (Zulu), who died in 1947. Extracts from English translations are included in an anthology of South African poetry edited by Roy McNab and published by Maskew Miller, 1958.

From: Encyclopedia of Southern Africa, compiled and edited by Eric Rosenthal, Fredrick Warne & Company Limited, London (New York), third edition 1965 (1961).