| Ubangian | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
Central African Republic, Cameroon, Gabon, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan |
| Linguistic classification: | suggested association with Niger–Congo |
| Subdivisions: | |
The Ubangian languages form a fairly close-knit language family of some seventy languages centered on the Central African Republic. They are the predominant languages of the CAR, spoken by 2–3 million people, and include the national language, Sango.
Contents |
Greenberg (1963) classified the then-little-known Ubangian languages as Niger–Congo and placed them within the Adamawa languages as "Eastern Adamawa". They were soon removed to a separate branch of Niger–Congo, for example within Blench's Savanna languages.[1] However, this has become increasingly uncertain, and Dimmendaal (2008) states that, based on the lack of convincing evidence for a Niger–Congo classification ever being produced, Ubangian "probably constitutes an independent language family that cannot or can no longer be shown to be related to Niger–Congo (or any other family)."[2]
Although the limits of the family are clear-cut, and it consists of half a dozen coherent branches, the interrelationships of these branches are not so straightforward. Williamson & Blench (2000) propose the following arrangement:
| Ubangian |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
In addition there is the Ngombe language, whose placement is uncertain due to a paucity of data.
Ethnologue 16 agrees with Williamson & Blench on the Sere–Mba node, and calls the Gbaya languages "Gbaya–Manza–Ngbaka".
Note: The ambiguous name Ngbaka is used for various languages in different branches of the family. Generally, singular Ngbaka language refers to one of the main Gbaya languages, whereas plural Ngbaka languages refers to a different branch.