Bemba (M42) is a Bantu language of the Sabi group, spoken principally in Zambia.
Name used by speakers: iciBemba / ichiBemba
Number of speakers: c. 4 million native speakers, but substantially more people speak Bemba as a second language in various parts of Zambia.
Usage: Mainly spoken in northern and central Zambia, with related varieties extending into the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Bemba is one of Zambia's seven officially recognized regional languages and is used in early primary education, broadcasting, publications and government communication. It is also an important urban lingua franca, particularly on the Copperbelt.
Varieties: Luunda (Luapula Lunda), Ŋumbo/Ng’umbo, Unga, Chishinga, Kabende, Lomotwa, Ngoma, Nwesi and Mukulu. Standard Bemba, based on the varieties of Northern and Muchinga provinces, is used in education and broadcasting. Town Bemba is an innovative urban variety that developed on the Copperbelt and is widely used as a lingua franca; it shows substantial influence from English and other Zambian languages.
First written: Bishop Joseph Dupont produced early Bemba grammatical and lexical materials in 1900.
Contact: extensive contact with other Zambian languages because of its spread as a regional lingua franca. Bemba has also borrowed substantially from English.
Sources for SBED entries
White Fathers. 1954. The White Fathers' Bemba-English Dictionary. 2nd ed, with later Mission Press reprint (Ndola, 1991). —— the major traditional source, which is now supplemented through consultation with Bemba speakers and online.
Malcolm Guthrie. 1995. A Vocabulary of Icibemba, ed. Michael Mann. —— compiled by Malcolm Guthrie in the 1940s; high tones marked (´), low tones not.
Orthography (from Omniglot) — for phonology see Hamann and Kula (2015) In proper nouns (and in some general usage), c is written ch S is pronounced [ʃ] when it appears before i.
