Word on the street is that the Pygmys speak Bantu languages of the surrounding Congoid/Bantu majority.
But did the Pygmy’s have their own original language? Surely they must, if they had speech, since there had to have been divergent evolution between Bantu and Pygmy. But then, what was that language? Might it have been (to us) extremely unsual in its features? If it’s lost, have the linguists reconstructed it from the few surviving words?
(PS I know that there are more than one nation/group/race of Pygmys, i’m lumping them in together for efficiency purposes)
The Bantu migration started 3,000 years ago and originated literally right next to Pygmy lands. The two populations have been intermingling for thousands of years, and speaking Bantu certainly had a huge trade advantage. I don’t think it’s likely that any original language survives. Do you think there will be much left of most Native American languages 3,000 years from now?
The central African Pymeys do have non-Bantu words in their vocab. I’ve heard theories that these may be the remnants of whatever language they spoke prior to learning Bantu, but I don’t really know enough about lingusitics to have an opinion. I’m not sure how you’d distinguish between words that descended from a prior language versus new words that were added after contact with Bantu speakers.
To elaborate, it’s likely that their culture survived because it provides advantages that allow them to live in difficult-to-farm land in relative peace. Farming in the deep rainforest is a pain in the butt (when you clear a field, it grows up again seemingly overnight) so the local Bantu groups were limited in their ability to expand and the Pygmy populations could live their fairly undisturbed as long as they kept their practices and population sustainable. Their culture helped make that happen.
But what purposes does language serve? For trade, Bantu had an obvious advantage. Bantu groups had exotic metal goods and stuff that pygmy groups would want to trade for. Inter-pygmy trading was probably much more limited because they basically had access to the same things. Why would I buy your skins and berries when I could just go get my own?
Language also serves the purpose of differentiating and unifying a culture. But in a hunter-gatherer society, is that necessary? I don’t think that aspect of language becomes useful until you reach a higher level of political organization.
This is very speculative, but it is possible that the ancestral language of at least some pygmies was a click language. Click languages are found among two of the oldest human lineages (ones that diverged earliest from other extant lineages), the Khoi-san (“Bushmen”) of southern Africa, and the Hadza of east Africa. The western Mbenga pygmies are almost as old as the Khoi-san, while the Mbuti of central Africa appear to be related to the Hadza.