Bantu

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From: mdabbott@aol.com
Date: Wed 15 Sep 1993 - 19:48:03 EEST

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In reply to: Peter van Heusden: "Tradetalk and Bantu"

Peter van Heusden writes:
>Oh damn, forgot who wrote this:
>> Tradetalk
>> ---------
>>
>> I don't understand why people hate Tradetalk. Earth has many such
>> lingua franca. The most obvious being Swahili and Bantu in Africa.

 >                                                   ^^^^^^^^^

>Bantu? What's Bantu? All I know Bantu as is a generic term for black,
currently
>very out of favour.
Bantu is actually the name of a large family of languages spoken throughout southern and central Africa. These languages spread along with the people and their culture and are by far the dominant languages and cultures in the southern half of Africa. However, they really aren't comparable to Tradetalk. "Bantu" is rather like "Romance" or "Germanic". The languages in the family are certainly closely related but normally not any more mutually intelligible than French and Spanish or English and German.

Swahili is indeed comparable to Tradetalk in some ways being a language derived from several others and fostered by trade. However, it was never as widespread as Tradetalk is usually portrayed, and eventually it replaced the indigenous language in some places.

Mark

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