A member of one of the great family of Negroid tribes occupying equatorial and southern Africa. These tribes include, as important divisions, the Kafirs, Damaras, Bechuanas, and many tribes whose names begin with Aba-, Ama-, Ba-, Ma-, Wa-, variants of the Bantu plural personal prefix Aba-, as in Ba-ntu, or Aba-ntu, itself a combination of this prefix with the syllable -ntu, a person; or as in Watusi.
the family of languages spoken by the Bantu people (definition 1).
Of or pertaining to the Bantu language group Bantu (definition 2); as, Bantu languages.
of or pertaining to the Bantu people (definition 1).
Language family and cultural complex from Central Africa.
A large group of African peoples that share related languages. The black-skinned Bantu settled most of Sub-Saharan Africa between the 13th to 16th centuries, displacing the brown-skinned Khoisan (Bushmen) peoples. Angola's population is perhaps 95% Bantu. Outside of Angola, Bantu tribes also comprise the vast majority of Sub-Saharan Africans; a few of the well-known are the Zulu, Xhosa, Masai, and Swahili.
a member of any of a large number of linguistically related peoples of Central and South Africa
a family of languages widely spoken in the southern half of the African continent
of or relating to the African people who speak one of the Bantoid languages or to their culture; "the Bantu population of Sierra Leone"
a person who is, or is generally accepted as, a member of any aboriginal race or tribe of Africa
A linguistic group (rather than an ethnic group) with about 800 distinct languages, including a number of mostly unresearched dialects, in sub-Saharan Africa.
Literally, "human beings," in more than 300 Bantu languages of equatorial and southern Africa. Bantu languages are classified within the central branch of the Niger-Congo language family; characterized by a system of noun classes marked by prefixes, so that each dependent word in a sentence carries a prefix of the same class. Outsiders often simplify by omitting prefix; for example, the amaZulu (people) are known as the Zulu; their language, isiZulu, is also referred to as Zulu. Speakers of seSotho, the BaSotho, are often referred to simply as Sotho peoples. Four major subgroups of Bantu languages--Nguni, Sotho, Tsonga-Shangaan, and Venda--are widely represented in South Africa. They include nine of South Africa's official languages--isiXhosa, isiZulu, isiNdebele, sePedi, seSotho, seTswana, siSwati, tshiVenda (also luVenda), and xiTsonga. During the apartheid era, the term Bantu was often used in government regulations, official statements, and sometimes in conversation to designate people of black African descent. Because this group was particularly disadvantaged by apartheid, the term Bantu assumed pejorative connotations in many apartheid-era contexts.
Name of an African language group; ancestors of Bantu speakers migrated from the Niger-Congo rivers region to the east and south.
Bantu is a general term for over 400 different ethnic groups in Africa, from Cameroon to South Africa, united by a common language family (the Bantu languages) and in many cases common customs.
