The Benue–Congo group of languages constitutes the largest branch of the Niger–Congo language family, both in terms of sheer number of languages, of which Ethnologue (2009) counts 900, and in terms of speakers, numbering perhaps 350 million. Within Niger–Congo, Benue–Congo is a branch of Atlantic–Congo, and perhaps also of Volta–Congo if that turns out to be a valid group. When it was first proposed by Joseph Greenberg (1963) it included the Volta–Niger languages (as West Benue–Congo); the boundary with those languages and with Kwa has been repeatedly debated. Blench (2012) states that if Benue–Congo is taken to be "the noun-class languages east and north of the Niger", it is likely to be a valid group, though no demonstration of this has been made in print.