Key facts
- Geographic distribution
- Southern Africa
- Ethnicity
- Nguni people
- Linguistic classification
- Niger–Congo ? Atlantic–Congo Volta-Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Southern Bantoid Bantu Southern Bantu Nguni
- Proto language
- Proto-Nguni
- Subdivisions
- Zunda languages Tekela languages
- Glottolog
- ngun1267
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
Show 2 more facts
- Commons category
- Nguni languages
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
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Article
The Nguni languages are a group of Bantu languages spoken in southern Africa (mainly South Africa, Zimbabwe and Eswatini) by the Nguni people. Nguni languages include Xhosa, Ndebele, Swati, and Zulu. The appellation "Nguni" derives from their ancestor called Mnguni. Ngoni (see below) is an older, or a shifted, variant. The Nguni languages are the indigenous languages of the subtropics of southern Africa.
It is sometimes argued that the use of Nguni as a generic label suggests a historical monolithic unity of the people in question, where in fact the situation may have been more complex. The linguistic use of the label (referring to a subgrouping of Bantu) is relatively stable.