ABSTRACT
Chapter 12 deals with language contact. Bantu languages are in contact with other Bantu languages and with languages of the Ubangi, Central Sudanic, Cushitic, Nilotic, Malagasy and various Khoisan families. Contact with non-Bantu languages is to various degrees and resulted in various outcomes; contact within Bantu needs to be established on the basis of careful use of reconstruction. Language contact can lead to radically different languages such as the mixed language Ma’á/Mbugu, the pidgin Fanagalo, and various urban youth slangs such as Sheng. In certain areas, intense contact resulted in major adaptation of various Bantu languages to each other (convergence), for example on the Mozambican coast, and areas in East Africa where Nguni groups integrated in local communities. Bantu languages constitute an ideal laboratory to compare contact-induced change in the areas of loan phonology, and in particular tone, borrowing into a noun class system and borrowing of verbs.
