Adamawa-Ubangi Languages

Adamawa-Ubangi languages, formerly Adamawa-Eastern languages, branch of the Niger-Congo language family consisting of 120 languages spoken by approximately 12 million people in an area that stretches from northeastern Nigeria across northern Cameroon, southern Chad, the Central African Republic, and northern Democratic Republic of the Congo into western South Sudan. Recent lexicostatistical studies have shown that Adamawa-Ubangi languages are closer to some of the Gur languages than they are to the languages of other Volta-Congo families. As a preliminary hypothesis, therefore, these two groups—Gur and Adamawa-Ubangi—are being linked together as North Volta-Congo. The Adamawa-Ubangi languages are further subdivided into Adamawa and Ubangi subgroups.

Most of the 80 languages found in the Adamawa group are small languages in northern Nigeria and Cameroon. The two largest are Mumuye (500,000 speakers) and Tupuri (250,000). The Adamawa group contains the least-studied languages in the Niger-Congo family.

There has been considerably more study of the 40 languages in the Ubangi group that lie to the east of the Adamawa group. The Ubangi languages include Banda, Gbaya, Ngbaka, and Zande, each of which has approximately one million speakers or more. Mention should also be made of Sango, a creole language derived from Ngbandi (a Ubangi language) that is spoken by about five million people primarily in the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Five- or seven-vowel systems predominate in Adamawa-Ubangi languages. There are restrictions on the sequences of vowels in a word; often required are identical vowels or common features such as back/front or open/closed. Adamawa languages generally have only a limited number of consonants occurring in the intervocalic or final position, often only nasals and stops and one lateral, whereas many Ubangi languages have the full range of consonants in all positions in the word. Adamawa-Ubangi languages have verb systems with a primary contrast between perfective (expressing completed action) and imperfective verbs.