Mba languages

Mba
Geographic distribution	Democratic Republic of the Congo
Linguistic classification	Ubangian Seri–Mba Ngbaka–Mba Mba
Glottolog	mbai1246

The four Mba languages form a small family of Ubangian languages scattered across the northern Democratic Republic of the Congo. The languages are,

• Ma (A-Ma-Lo)
• Dongo
• Mba
• Ndunga

The most populous is Mba itself, with about 40,000 speakers. Ma is the most divergent. The four Mba languages are not particularly closely related to each other and display considerable lexical diversity.^[1]

Language contact

The Mba languages have received significant influences from Bantu to the south, and from Zande languages to the north.^[2] For example, some Mba languages such as Ndunga have borrowed many noun prefixes from nearby Bantu languages (Pasch 1986, 1987, 1988).

Internal classification

Mba internal classification according to Pasch (1986):^[1]

Mba

• A-Ma-Lo
• Ndunga-Mba-'Dongo
  • 'Dongo-ko
  • Ndunga-Mba
    • Ndunga-le
    • Mba-ne

References

1. Pasch, Helma (1986). Die Mba-Sprachen: Die Nominalklassensysteme und die genetische Gliederung einer Gruppe von Ubangi-Sprachen. Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika (SUGIA) (in German). Vol. Suplement 6. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe. p. 359. ISSN 0720-0986.
2. Güldemann, Tom (2018). "Historical linguistics and genealogical language classification in Africa". In Güldemann, Tom (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of Africa. The World of Linguistics series. Vol. 11. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 58–444. doi:10.1515/9783110421668-002. ISBN 978-3-11-042606-9. S2CID 133888593.