Introduction

This chapter presents portrait of the Bantu family, starting with its delimitation, number of speakers and geographical distribution, and some of its main typological characteristics. It finishes with a concise history of its scholarly study, including some early attempts at external classification. Bantu languages started to kindle the scholarly curiosity of Europeans as early as the late 15th century, when Portuguese sailors began their voyages along the coasts of Central, Southern and Eastern Africa. The chapter also provides an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book. The book provides an overview of the state of the art in the study of the sound systems and morphosyntactic structures of the Bantu languages and of their classification, reconstruction and different contact situations. It provides a thorough introduction to the grammatical structures of the Bantu languages and to the historical evolutions that have shaped them.