1 CLASSIFICATION AND WHERE SPOKEN
Bemba belongs to the Bemba Group (Guthrie 1942) of Bantu and is spoken in the Northern,
Luapula, Copperbelt, and Northwestern Central provinces of Zambia, as well as in southeastern
Zaire.
2
NUMBER OF SPEAKERS
Ohannessian and Kashoki (1978) offer a
range from a narrow interpretation of the 1969 Zambian
census of 18.6 percent (or 741,000) to a larger figure of 34.6 percent
(or 1,328,000 speakers).
On the basis of their own sample survey they suggest a percentage of 56.2
(or 2,339,000) first
language speakers of Bemba. UBS (1982) lists 1.5 million speakers. In
contrast, Voegelin and
Voegelin (1977) list 170,000 first-language users, which appears out of
line with the other figures.
Grimes (1996) gives a figure of 2,150,000 or more in all countries.
3 DIALECT SURVEY
In addition
to the four dialects of Bemba (Ngoma, Lomotua, Nwesi, and Lembue) there
is
"Town Bemba," which "is to be found everywhere in the (Zambian) copperbelt"
(Heine 1970).
Although Town Bemba is a lingua franca, derived from Bemba, Richardson
(1981) believes it
is justified to consider them different languages
4
USAGE
Bemba is a national (official) language
in Zambia and is widely used as a lingua franca, especially
in urban areas, in Copperbelt Province, and in radio broadcasts. At least
one periodical, Mbila,
is known to exist. Mann (personal communication, 1986), citing Zell, ed.
(1984), notes: "African
Books in Print/Livres africains disponible (3d edition), Mansell Publishing
Ltd reports only 29
Bemba titles in print; this probably does not include some titles prepared
for and circulated
directly to schools but represents a depressing decline in availability."
5
ORTHOGRAPHIC STATUS
Although
orthographic practices vary widely, reports Michael Mann (personal communication,
1985), there is a set of rules for spelling Bemba. These (entitled Zambia
Languages Orthography,
by S. Chimuka, 1976) have been published by the Zambian Ministry of Education
and Culture
as part of a project to standardize the orthography of Zambian languages.
Bemba has about
100 titles in print, some of which, reports Mann, "consciously reflect
Town Bemba."
6
SETS OF LEARNING MATERIALS
One set
of learning materials should be prepared based on standard Bemba.
| 7. Resources | ||||
| Institutional Resources | Individual Resources | |||
| 8. Bibliography | ||||
| Learning Materials | Descriptions | Dictionaries | Readers | Others |
[Previous] [Table
of Contents] [African
Studies Center][Next]
|
http://isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/