English Explanatory Dictionary

Niger-Congo

English dictionary entry

Meanings

name
  1. A major language family of sub-Saharan Africa noted for the use of a noun class system.
noun
  1. A speaker of any Niger-Congo language, or a member of a Niger-Congo culture by ancestry or other affinity.
  2. An African descendant of the transatlantic middle passage in the Americas.
adj
  1. Belonging to the Niger-Congo language family, or pertaining to its associated peoples.

Word forms

Niger-Congo Niger-Congos

Etymology

Coined in the 1950s by Joseph Greenberg, from the name of the two principal rivers in the area in which this language family is spoken, the Niger River and the Congo River.

Synonyms

Niger-Kordofanian
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
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