Answer the following question: Information:  - In the classification of African languages, Bantoid is a putative branch of the BenueCongo branch of the NigerCongo family. The term 'Bantoid' was first used by Krause in 1895 for languages that showed resemblances in vocabulary to Bantu. Greenberg in his 1963 "The Languages of Africa" defined Bantoid as the group to which (Narrow) Bantu belongs together with its closest relatives; this is the sense in which the term is still used today. The Bantoid languages probably do not actually form a coherent group.  - The NigerCongo languages constitute one of the world's major language families, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area, number of speakers, and number of distinct languages. They may constitute the world's largest language family in terms of distinct languages, although this question is complicated by ambiguity about what constitutes a distinct language.  - Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west; Chad to the northeast; the Central African Republic to the east; and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Cameroon's coastline lies on the Bight of Bonny, part of the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean.  - Central Africa is a core region of the African continent which includes Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda. Middle Africa (as used by the United Nations when categorising geographic subregions) is an analogous term that includes Angola, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and São Tomé and Príncipe. All of the states in the UN subregion of Middle Africa, plus those otherwise commonly reckoned in Central Africa (11 states in total), constitute the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS). Since its independence in 2011, South Sudan has also been commonly included in the region.  - In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is generally used as the most important criterion for distinguishing languages from dialects, although sociolinguistic factors are often also used.  - The Mbam languages are a group of erstwhile zone - A Bantu languages which some lexicostatistical studies suggest are not actually Bantu , but related Southern Bantoid languages . Janssens ( 1992 -- 93 ) posits that they are all of Guthrie 's zone A.60 languages , half of his A.40 languages , and perhaps Bube ( A.31 ) . Blench ( 2011 ) includes Jarawan in A.60 , and keeps both in Bantu . Sanaga ( A60 ) : Tuki ( Bacenga ) , Leti West Mbam ( A40 ) : Bati ( A60 ) , Nomaande ( Mandi ) -- Tunen ( Aling'a , Banen ) -- Tuotomb -- Yambeta , Nyokon Yambasa ( A60 ) : Nubaca , Mbule , Nugunu , Elip -- Mmaala -- Yangben Jarawan ( See ) ? Bube ( A31 )  - The Bantu languages, technically the Narrow Bantu languages (as opposed to "Wide Bantu", a loosely defined categorization which includes other Bantoid languages), constitute a traditional branch of the NigerCongo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, though the distinction between language and dialect is often unclear, and "Ethnologue" counts 535 languages. Bantu languages are spoken largely east and south of present-day Cameroon, that is, in the regions commonly known as Central Africa, Southeast Africa, and Southern Africa. Parts of the Bantu area include languages from other language families (see map).  - Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web-based publication that contains statistics for 7,457 languages in its 19th edition, which was released in 2016. Of these, 7,097 are listed as living and 360 are listed as extinct. "Ethnologue" provides information on the number of speakers, location, dialects, linguistic affiliations, availability of the Bible in each language and dialect described, and an estimate of language viability using the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS). The publication is well respected and widely used by linguists.   - Southern Africa is the southernmost region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics, and including several countries. The term "southern Africa" or "Southern Africa", generally includes Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. From a political perspective the region is said to be unipolar with South Africa as a first regional power.    After reading the paragraphs above, we are interested in knowing the entity with which 'mbam languages' exhibits the relationship of 'instance of'. Find the answer from the choices below.  Choices: - area  - bight  - branch  - categorization  - classification  - continent  - country  - criterion  - edition  - family  - geographical  - geography  - group  - information  - language  - language family  - ocean  - publication  - region  - relationship  - republic  - sense  - statistics  - subregion  - term
Answer:
language family