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.
Language contact
The Mba languages have received significant influences from
Bantu
Bantu may refer to:
*Bantu languages, constitute the largest sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages
*Bantu peoples, over 400 peoples of Africa speaking a Bantu language
*Bantu knots, a type of African hairstyle
*Black Association for Nationali ...
to the south, and from
Zande languages to the north.
For example, some Mba languages such as
Ndunga have borrowed many noun prefixes from nearby
Bantu languages
The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu people of Central, Southern, Eastern africa and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages.
The t ...
(Pasch 1986, 1987, 1988).
Internal classification
Mba internal classification according to Pasch (1986):
;Mba
*
A-Ma-Lo
*Ndunga-Mba-'Dongo
**'
Dongo-ko
**Ndunga-Mba
***
Ndunga-le
***
Mba-ne
References
{{Niger-Congo branches
Ubangian languages