Mel languages
Mel | |
---|---|
Southern (West) Atlantic [reduced] | |
Geographic distribution: | Guinea-Bissau through Liberia |
Linguistic classification: | |
Subdivisions: |
|
Glottolog: | mela1257 (Mel + Gola)[1] |
The Mel languages are a branch of Niger–Congo languages spoken in Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. The most populous is Temne, with about two million speakers; Kissi is next, with half a million.
Languages
Mel has traditionally been classified as the bulk of a southern branch of a West Atlantic branch of Niger–Congo. However, these are geographic and typological rather than genealogical groups; Segerer (2010) shows that there is no exclusive relationship between Mel and the other southern languages, Gola and Limba.
Mel |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Glottolog retains Golla but removes Sua, classifying the latter with Mboteni and Mbulungish.
Footnotes
- ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Mel + Gola". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
References
- Guillaume Segerer & Florian Lionnet 2010. "'Isolates' in 'Atlantic'". Language Isolates in Africa workshop, Lyon, Dec. 4
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 9/11/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.