Northwest Bantu languages

Northwest Bantu
Forest Bantu
Geographic distribution:	Cameroon, Gabon, Republic of the Congo, DR Congo
Linguistic classification:	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Southern Bantoid Bantu Northwest Bantu
Subdivisions:	≈ zones A–C

The Northwest Bantu or Forest Bantu languages are those Narrow Bantu languages which fall outside Central aka Savannah Bantu. They are the most diverse group of Bantu languages. One salient distinction between the two groups is their mirror-image tone systems: where Northwest Bantu has a high tone in a word, Central generally has a low tone in that word's cognate, and vice versa.

Conceptions of Northwest Bantu generally include zones A, A and B, or A through C in Guthrie's geographic classification. The exact extent of Northwest Bantu depends on the author; most Bantuists include zone A or zones A and B, others add zones C, D10, D30, H10, H40, D21–23, and some of the D40 languages. Some go so far as to include Mamfe and Grassfields Bantu.^[1]

Other than the H40 language Kongo, which is not frequently included, the numerically most important Northwest Bantu language is the zone-A Beti dialect cluster, consisting of Fang, Ewondo, Bulu, and other varieties spoken by two million people. These are mutually intelligible, but considered separate languages because the people are ethnically distinct. Another important language is the zone-C Tetela language, with close to a million speakers.

References

1. ^ Derek Nurse, 2008, Tense and Aspect in Bantu