BenueâÂÂCongo (sometimes called East BenueâÂÂCongo) is a major branch of the VoltaâÂÂCongo languages which covers most of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Central Nigerian (or Platoid) contains the Plateau, Jukunoid and Kainji families, and BantoidâÂÂCross combines the Bantoid and Cross River groups.
Bantoid is only a collective term for every subfamily of BantoidâÂÂCross except Cross River, and this is no longer seen as forming a valid branch, however one of the subfamilies, Southern Bantoid, is still considered valid. It is Southern Bantoid which contains the Bantu languages, which are spoken across most of Sub-Saharan Africa. This makes BenueâÂÂCongo one of the largest subdivisions of the NigerâÂÂCongo language family, both in number of languages, of which Ethnologue counts 976 (2017), and in speakers, numbering perhaps 350 million. BenueâÂÂCongo also includes a few minor isolates in the NigeriaâÂÂCameroon region, but their exact relationship is uncertain.
The neighbouring VoltaâÂÂNiger branch of Nigeria and Benin is sometimes called "West BenueâÂÂCongo", but it does not form a united branch with BenueâÂÂCongo. When BenueâÂÂCongo was first proposed by Joseph Greenberg (1963), it included VoltaâÂÂNiger (as West BenueâÂÂCongo); the boundary between VoltaâÂÂNiger and Kwa has been repeatedly debated. Blench (2012) states that if BenueâÂÂCongo is taken to be "the noun-class languages east and north of the Niger", it is likely to be a valid group, though no demonstration of this has been made in print.The branches of the BenueâÂÂCongo family are thought to be as follows:
Ukaan is also related to BenueâÂÂCongo; Roger Blench suspects it might be either the most divergent (East) BenueâÂÂCongo language or the closest relative to BenueâÂÂCongo.
Fali and Tita are also BenueâÂÂCongo but are otherwise unclassified.
Below is a list of major BenueâÂÂCongo branches and their primary locations (centres of diversity) within Nigeria based on Blench (2019).
Sample basic vocabulary for reconstructed proto-languages of different Benue-Congo branches:
Based upon archaeological and lexicostatistical evidenceâÂÂlinking pottery-related terminology in proto-Benue-Congo with an estimated date for the introduction of pottery into the Grassfields region, and comparison of lexical items within related languages via Levenshtein (edit) distance, respectivelyâÂÂit has been suggested that Benue-Congo may be one of the world's oldest extant distinct linguistic subfamilies.