Bantu languages | Wikipedia audio article
Channel: wikipedia tts
Date: 2018-12-03

This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
Bantu languages


00:02:14 1 Name
00:04:41 2 Origin
00:06:05 3 Classification
00:09:28 4 Language structure
00:12:20 4.1 Reduplication
00:14:33 4.2 Noun class
00:14:46 5 By country
00:16:04 6 Geographic areas
00:16:24 7 Bantu words popularised in western cultures
00:17:22 8 Writing systems
00:18:05 9 See also



Listening is a more natural way of learning, when compared to reading. Written language only began at around 3200 BC, but spoken language has existed long ago.

Learning by listening is a great way to:
- increases imagination and understanding
- improves your listening skills
- improves your own spoken accent
- learn while on the move
- reduce eye strain

Now learn the vast amount of general knowledge available on Wikipedia through audio (audio article). You could even learn subconsciously by playing the audio while you are sleeping! If you are planning to listen a lot, you could try using a bone conduction headphone, or a standard speaker instead of an earphone.

You can find other Wikipedia audio articles too at:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuKfABj2eGyjH3ntPxp4YeQ

You can upload your own Wikipedia articles through:
https://github.com/nodef/wikipedia-tts



"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."
- Socrates



SUMMARY
=======
The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) technically the Narrow Bantu languages, as opposed to "Wide Bantu", a loosely defined categorization which includes other "Bantoid" languages, are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu peoples throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.
As part of the Southern Bantoid group, they are part of the Benue-Congo language family, which in turn is part of the large Niger–Congo phylum. 
The total number of Bantu languages ranges in the hundreds,  depending on the definition of "language" vs. "dialect" estimated at between 440 and 680 distinct languages.
The total number of Bantu speakers is in the hundreds of millions, estimated around 350 million in the mid-2010s (roughly 30% of the total population of Africa, or roughly 5% of world population).
Bantu languages are largely spoken east and south of present-day Cameroon, throughout Central Africa, Southeast Africa and Southern Africa.  
Estimates of number of speakers of most languages vary widely, due  to the lack of accurate statistics in most sub-Saharan countries. The number of Bantu speakers accounts for roughly half of all speakers of Niger-Congo languages, or more than a quarter of the entire population of Africa, roughly 350 million people in the mid-2010s. About one sixth of the Bantu speakers, and about one third of Bantu languages, are found in the Democratic Republic of Congo alone (c. 60 million speakers as of 2015).  (see list of Bantu peoples).
The Bantu language with the largest total number of speakers is Swahili; however, the majority of its speakers use it as a second language (L1: c. 16 million, L2: 80 million,  as of 2015)Other major Bantu languages include Zulu, with 27 million speakers (15.7 million L2), and Shona, with about 11 million speakers (if Manyika and Ndau are included). Ethnologue separates the largely mutually intelligible Kinyarwanda and Kirundi, which, if grouped together, have 12.4 million speakers.