Bemba, also known as Chibemba and Ichibemba, is a Bantu language that is spoken primarily in Zambia but is also spoken in surrounding countries. Bemba and its dialects are spoken and understood by a sizable percentage of the population of Zambia. Over three million people are estimated to be native Bemba speakers in Zambia alone, with others using Bemba as a second language. Bemba is used as a lingua franca in Zambian cities and, according to Ethnologue, it "has higher social status than other languages except English" within Zambia. Map showing the approximate distribution of Bantu (dull yellow) vs. ... Lingua franca, literally Frankish language in Italian, was originally a mixed language consisting largely of Italian plus a vocabulary drawn from Turkish, Persian, French, Greek and Arabic and used for communication throughout the Middle East. ... Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics), a Christian linguistic service organization which studies lesser-known languages primarily to provide the speakers with native language biblical texts. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

Bemba is also spoken, to a lesser extent, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, and Botswana.

It is an SVO language. In linguistic typology, subject-verb-object (SVO) is the sequence subject verb object in neutral expressions: Sam ate oranges. ...

External links

• Links to Bemba Grammatical Description, Texts, and Sound Files
• Bemba Language Resources
• Here is an explanation by Dave Roberts of a program he designed to help missionaries in Zambia learn Chibemba.

Also see under Bemba people The Bemba belong to a large group of peoples in northeast and northwestern Zambia who trace their origins to the Luba and Lunda states of the upper Congo basin, in what became Katanga (now Shaba) Province in southern Zaire. ...