Atlantic Languages

Atlantic languages, formerly West Atlantic languages, branch of the Niger-Congo language family spoken primarily in Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. The approximately 45 Atlantic languages are spoken by about 30 million people. One language cluster, Fula (also called Fulani, Peul, Fulfulde, and Toucouleur), accounts for more than half of this number and is the most widely scattered language group in Africa, having substantial groups of speakers in almost all the savanna lands from Senegal to Sudan and large numbers in northern Nigeria and Cameroon. This very wide dispersion is partly accounted for by the historical fact that the Fulani have been nomadic pastoralists with large herds of cattle. Apart from Fula, the Atlantic languages are located primarily along the Atlantic coast from the Sénégal River to Liberia.

All the Atlantic languages fall into the northern or southern groups, except for the languages spoken on the Bijagós Islands, which constitute a small third group with 20,000 speakers. The northern group of languages includes Fula (15,000,000 speakers), Wolof (5,000,000), Serer (900,000), Diola (500,000), Balanta (350,000), and Manjaku (250,000). The southern group includes Temne (1,250,000), Kisi (500,000), and Limba (350,000).

Two characteristics of the Atlantic branch are the prevalence of noun class systems and the occurrence of full concord systems with many of the features described for the Bantu languages. In many Atlantic languages the initial consonant of the noun takes alternates according to the noun class prefix with which it occurs.

In the noun class system both prefixes and suffixes are found. Fula, for example, has suffixes. The most likely hypothesis seems to be that the original class system deployed a set of prefixes. At some point suffixes—usually in close phonological similarity to the prefix—developed. It seems probable that the suffixed element had a demonstrative force when a prefix was present. Subsequently the prefixes were lost but the suffixes have been retained.