bantu
n. C / Un. a large group of related languages and the people who speak them in central and southern Africa. Swahili and Zulu are two famous examples from this group.
n. a major branch of the Niger-Congo language family, comprising several hundred languages spoken across central, eastern, and southern Africa. Refers collectively to the speakers of these languages, though primarily used in linguistic and anthropological contexts.
Many people in southern Africa speak Bantu languages.
The historical migration of Bantu speakers significantly shaped the cultural and linguistic landscape of the African continent.
Linguists study the shared grammatical structures of Bantu languages to trace the ancient migration patterns of populations moving from West Africa toward the south and east.
Borrowed from Proto-Bantu *bàntʊ̀ pl (“people”), as reconstructed by the 19th-century linguist Wilhelm Bleek.
Often used as a collective noun or as a modifier before 'languages' or 'peoples'.