First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This volume I of three on series on Africa. It is part one and a look is a look at the old, extinct and mixed languages of Africa and was originally published in 1883.

Dr Crabb's 1965 study of the Ekoid Bantu languages of Ogoja examines these related languages as a basis of comparative historical research. He chose fourteen of these Ekoid languages as representative of a number of languages in the north-west area of Nigeria bordering on the Bantu language area, whose status as Bantu languages has been open to question. This study is based on extensive field work and presents comparatively the phonologies and selected vocabularies of the languages.

For the purposes of this volume, originally published in 1954, two southern zones of Bantu have been included - south of the Zambesi and east of the Kalahari. The book discusses the phonetic and morphological characteristics of these 2 zones and a classification of the groups, clusters and dialects is provided. For comparative purposes detailed information on some striking dialectical forms is given in the appendices.