ABSTRACT
In spite of the wide distribution of African peoples and the existence of perhaps a thousand languages on the continent, the words for two, three, and four are similar in an area covering about half of Africa. This area includes the Sudan—the region extending from the Sahara southward to the Gulf of Guinea, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Nile River—and most of the southern part of the continent, now inhabited by Bantu-speaking peoples. The Sudanic and Bantu branches of the Niger-Congo language family diverge on the choice of the secondary base, the former generally using twenty, and the latter favoring ten. As a numeration system develops, special words are introduced, or words take on a new meaning. Foreign influence may bring about linguistic changes. Along the Niger River, for several hundred miles from the coast, the subtractive method of forming number words is common.
