The Bantu language family (Bleek)
Familia lingüística bantú (Bleek)
- Date
- 1862 · confidence high
- Place
- Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
- Credited to
- Wilhelm Bleek
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Wilhelm Bleek recognised that hundreds of languages of central, eastern and southern Africa share a common stock and coined the term 'Bantu' (from ba-ntu, 'people') in his comparative grammar. It was the first step towards reconstructing the Bantu expansion.
Bleek proposed the term in 1857-58 and developed it in A Comparative Grammar of South African Languages (1862-69); the detailed classification was later work by Guthrie (1948). The term has been criticised for its racist connotation in South African usage.
What it led to
- reconstruction of the Bantu expansion (Greenberg, Guthrie, Vansina)
- African historical linguistics
- Bleek and Lloyd's study of Khoisan languages