This article refers to the Bemba language. For other uses, see Bemba (other uses)The term Bemba may refer to: * Bemba language (Chibemba), a Bantu language * Bemba people (BaBemba), an ethnic group of central Africa * Jean-Pierre Bemba, the former vice-President of the Democratic Republic of Congo * A Caribbean drum, used in the music of Trinidad and Tobago and also spelled ...Bemba (other uses).

The Bemba language, Chibemba, also known as Cibemba, Ichibemba, and Chiwemba, is a BantuBantu is a general term for over 400 different ethnic groups in Africa, from Cameroon to South Africa, united by a common language family (the Bantu languages) and in many cases common customs.Bantu language that is spoken primarily in ZambiaZambia, officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. It borders the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia to the south, and Angola to the west. Formerly Northern Rhodesia, the country's name reflects the Zambezi river.Zambia by the Bemba peopleThe Bemba (or 'BaBemba' using the Ba- prefix to mean 'people of', and also called 'Awemba' or 'BaWemba' in the past) belong to a large group of peoples mainly in the Northern, Luapula and Copperbelt Provinces of Zambia who trace their origins to the Luba and Lunda states of the upper Congo basin, in what became Katanga Province in southern Congo-Kinshasa (DRC). Bemba history is a major historical phenomenon in the development of chieftainship in a large and culturally ...Bemba people and about 18 related ethnic groups. The noun classIn linguistics, grammatical genders, sometimes also called noun classes, are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words; every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be very few which belong to several classes at once.Hockett, Charles F. (1958) A Course in Modern Linguistics, Macmillan, p. 231.SIL: Glossary of Linguistic Terms: What is grammatical gender? If a language distinguishes between masculine and feminine gender, for instance, then each noun belongs ...noun class prefix 'chi-' indicates languages and the prefix 'ba-' indicates people, so 'Babemba' also means the Bemba people.

Chibemba 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 Chibemba speakers in Zambia alone, with others using Chibemba as a second language. Chibemba is used as a lingua francaA lingua franca is any language widely used beyond the population of its native speakers. The de facto status of lingua franca is usually "awarded" by the masses to the language of the most influential nation(s) of the time. Any given language normally becomes a lingua franca primarily by being used for international ...lingua franca in Zambian cities and, according to EthnologueEthnologue: 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 Bibles in their native ...Ethnologue, it "has higher social status than other languages except EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language originating in England, and the first language for most people in Australia, Canada, the Commonwealth Caribbean, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States of America (also commonly known as the Anglosphere). It is used extensively as a second language and as an official ...English" within Zambia, but Ethnologue has been criticised for these kinds of statements and this is disputed by some.

Chibemba is also spoken, to a lesser extent, in the Democratic Republic of the CongoThe Democratic Republic of the Congo (French: République démocratique du Congo), also often referred to as DRC, RDC or formerly as Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, The Congo, Congo/Leopoldville, Congo/Kinshasa and Zaire (or Zaïre in French), is the third largest country by area ...Democratic Republic of the Congo, TanzaniaTanzania ,Tanzania. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/t anzania (accessed: March 27, 2007). officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda on the north, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the west, and Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique on the south. To the east it borders the Indian Ocean. The country is named after Tanganyika, ...Tanzania, and BotswanaBotswana, officially the Republic of Botswana, is a landlocked nation in Southern Africa. Citizens of Botswana are Batswana (singular: Motswana), regardless of ethnicity. Formerly the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, Botswana adopted its new name after becoming independent within the Commonwealth on 30 September 1966. It is bordered by South Africa to the south and southeast, Namibia to the west, Zambia to the north, and Zimbabwe to the northeast. The economy, closely tied to ...Botswana.

It is an SVOIn linguistic typology, subject-verb-object (SVO), is a sentence structure where the subject comes first, the verb second, and the object third. Languages may be classified according to the dominant sequence of these elements. The SVO and Subject Object Verb orders are by far the two most common, accounting ...SVO language, and is also a tonal languageA Tonal language is a language that uses tone to distinguish words. Tone is a phonological trait common to many languages around the world (though rare in Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and the Pacific). Chinese is perhaps the most well-known of such languages.tonal language.