The Adamawa-Ubangi languages are spoken in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, southern Sudan, and the Central African Republic, by a total of about 12 million people. The group belongs to the Niger-Congo languages. It is divided into two groups:

• Adamawa languages (eg Niellim)
• Ubangi languages (eg Sango, an Ubangian-based creole)

The group was first set up by Joseph H. Greenberg in 1963, under the name Adamawa-Eastern. Within Niger-Congo, its closest affiliation is widely believed to be with Gur, although the internal classification of Niger-Congo still has many uncertainties.

The Adamawa languages are among the least studied in Africa, and include many endangered languages; by far the largest of the nearly one hundred small Adamawa languages is Mumuye, at 400,000 speakers. A couple of unclassified languages - notably Laal and Jalaa - are found along their fringes. Ubangian languages, while nearly as numerous, are somewhat better studied; one in particular, Sango, has (in creolized form) become a major trade language of central Africa.

Adamawa-Ubangi languages often have partial vowel harmony, involving restrictions on the co-occurrence of vowels in a word.

Noun class systems are widespread, although some languages have lost them.

Some of the subject pronouns (Boyd 1989) seem to have originally been along the lines of:

• "I": *mi or *ma
• "you (sg.)": *mo
• "you (pl.): *u, *ui, *i (+n?)

The third person pronouns vary widely.

In possessive constructions, the possessed typically precedes the possessor, and sentence order is usually Subject Verb Object.

Links

• Adamawa-Ubangian Languages (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/roger_blench/Adamawa-Ubangian%20languages/Adamawa-Ubangian_website.htm) (Roger Blench)