Location: The Bantu people make up about 2/3 of Africa's population, and inhabit the southern and eastern part of the continent.
Language: The Bantu are a group of people known more as a language group than as a distinct ethnic group. The Bantu people are characterized by the word "ntu" in their language and have similar social characteristics. These people are divided into three categories and each category has its own language as shown in the table below. There are many other languages.
|
Bantu |
Languages |
|
Southern |
Zulu, Swazi, Xhosa, Tswana, Basuto, Venda, Ndebele or Matabele, Pondo, Pedi |
|
Central |
|
|
Eastern |
The Baganda, the Basoga, the Banyoro, the Batoro, and the Banyankole in Uganda. The Kikuyu, Luhya, Akamba, Meru, Embu, Taita, Giryama, Digo, Pokomo in Kenya |
The most widely spoken Bantu-derived language is Swahili, which is used by up to 50 million speakers on the eastern coast of Africa. There are two ways in which Bantu languages are different from English, Spanish, French, German, or other European languages. One is that you can stick markers onto a verb to indicate who's doing and receiving the action, so what would take a whole sentence in English only takes a single word in Swahili. The other is all nouns are marked as belonging to one of fifteen to twenty genders.
Most Bantu languages were unwritten until Europeans arrived. The first Europeans to have contact with the Bantu were missionaries, so they were interested in translating the Bible and would write down the local language using
History: The Bantu migrated from Congo or Niger Delta Basin Their migration throughout Africa is one of the largest migrations in human history. This migration began in about 1000 AD -1800 AD. There is continued speculation about why they moved in the first place. One reason may be that overpopulation encouraged some groups to move away in order to practice agriculture. Another could be that they were in search of fertile land. Or, the move may have been due to internal conflicts within their communities or external attacks by their neighbors.
The Bantu introduced many things into the areas they migrated to. They were an agricultural people and introduced crops such as millet and sorghum. They may also have introduced iron smelting and iron tools.
Though this page has been carefully researched, the author does not claim expertise on the Bantu.
Please send questions, comments, and corrections to emuseum@mnsu.edu and include the URL.
Resources:
Students of Think quest
Electronic document, http://library.thinkquest.org/16645/the_people/ethnic_bantu.shtml, accessed February 7, 2009.
School of Education, Makerere University
Electronic document, http://www.ugandaschoolresources.org/elate/history/bantumigration/bantuintro.html , accessed February 7, 2009.
Edited by Esther Nalubwama, 2009