ABSTRACT
The present chapter aims to provide an updated list of all Bantu languages known at present and to provide individual pointers to further information on the inventory. As a language inventory, it pretends to be complete only on the language level, rather than on the level of dialect, village lect or ethnic group. For the purposes of this inventory we have adopted the language vs dialect divisions used in the ISO 639-3 standard 1 reflected in the Ethnologue (18th edition, Lewis et al. 2015). This particular division has some advantages compared to other possibilities. The Ethnologue (henceforth E18) has (unsourced, but) detailed information associated with each speech variety, such as speaker numbers and map location. E18 is widely used for language inventories outside Bantu linguistics and thus allows some comparability. But foremostly, the language/dialect divisions of E18 have a stated aim to follow certain principles and generally exhibit less inconsistencies relative to other alternatives.
