Noun classes, a brief introduction

For more clearer reference, I'll label posts by language. It may be easier to write about grammar, vocabulary, and syntax in a single tongue, rather than reflecting on the differences between the three. So this post is specifically about Bemba.

Noun Classes and Concord

Bantu languages are described as noun-centered, the noun occupying the primary focus of the sentence or phrase. Because there is no verb conjugation, but instead verb construction, the noun classes tend to be the most difficult part of the language. I still struggle with them.

A class is a group of nouns which share a common prefix and are related in some ways, with significant exceptions. Different authors will disagree in how nouns are grouped, as well. Whereas verbs have agreement, nouns have concord - in the case of Bantu languages, all words related to the noun will adopt a prefix in agreement (or concord). For some in-depth linguistic analysis of this, see Multiple Agreement, Concord and Case Checking in Bantu by Brent Henderson.

An example of concord:

Umuntu mutali uleya ku mushi.
The tall man (umuntu) is going to the village.

Compare with:

Iconi citali cileya ku mushi.
The tall bird (iconi) is going to the village.

I like to think of noun classes and concord as endowing Bantu languages with a type of reverse rhyming system - the entire sentence is changed with the simple change of the noun (a change which would be simple in English, but is demonstrably more significant in Bemba).

Different grammar analyses have different approaches to grouping and categorizing the noun classes. I'll adopt Mann's because it is perhaps the most straightforward, grouping classes by their plurals (each class has a distinct plural form). In this system, there are 9 noun classes. The format I learnt involved 18 noun classes, but included the annoying feature of referencing other classes for plural (for example all ci- nouns become fi- in plural, while li-, ku-, and bu- all turn into ma-, while n- has no separate plural).

Here's the always daunting noun class. I'll attempt to break it down in future posts.

Please note noun prefixes add a vowel when at the beginning of the sentence (mu- becomes umu-, ka- becomes aka-, with the exception of n-, which stays the same). For brevity's sake, I'll keep the prefixes in their short form.

Class	Singular	Plural
1	mu	ba
2	mu	mi
3	n, lu	n
4	ci	fi
5	li, ku, bu, lu	ma
6	ka	tu
7	bu	bu
8	ku	ku
9	ku, mu, pa	ku, mu, pa

Overwhelming of course, and it gets worse, when adjective and verb concords are added, with the very hazy  definitions of what words belong in each noun class. But this is a brief introduction, and I'll leave it at that.

Sources
Mann, Michael. An Outline of Icibemba Grammar. Lusaka, Zambia: Bookworld Publishers. 1977.

Basic Pronunciation

First of all, a commentary on writing and reading Bantu languages. The first grammars and dictionaries were written by Western missionaries; very few African languages have writing systems, and most of them are found in Northern African societies. So each attempt at recording a Bantu language using the Latin script may differ in its approach and use of special characters. In this blog I will try to restrict myself to normal characters and offer explanations where needed.


The vowels


The vowels of these three languages (Bemba, Lala, Nyanja) are shared, and are pronounced as follows:

a = as a in far
e = as a in fare
i = as ee in see
o = as o in sore
u = as oo in root

The consonants


Most consonants are pronounced the same or similar English. Some are non existent (r, q, v, and x) and z is used in Nyanja but not Bemba nor Lala. Here are some special pronunciations:

-b  except when following an m, is like a v except the lips are together like an English b (Mann calls this a "voiced bilabial fricative phonetic" if you're interested)

-l   is generally interchangable with r, and pronouncing either sounds like a combination of both, similar to Japanese

-h  only occurs in sh or ch


-c   is pronounced like ch in church

-ng   has the sound of ng in singer. It is sometimes seen as η or ñ.

(Sources: Hetherwick, A Practical Manual of the Nyanja Language; Mann, An Outline of Icibemba Grammar; Hoch, Bemba Pocket Dictionary)

Fwayeni Google

Google.co.zm is now offered in four Zambian languages: Bemba, Nyanja, Lozi, and Timbuka. An article in the Lusaka Times reports on this, as well as the high connectivity costs of Zambia related to other nearby African countries.


The search button is fwayeni, a polite command derived from fwaya: to look for; seek; want; wish; fetch; intend; desire.

The languages of this blog

Bantu is a group of some 500 languages within the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo language family (also see this interactive tree of the languages). The most popularly spoken are Rundi, Rwanda, Shona, Xhosa, Zulu, and Swahili.

The Bemba Language, or iciBemba, is a Bantu language spoken mostly in north-eastern Zambia, and to a lesser extent in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, and Botswana. It is spoken by almost 4 million people, mostly the Bemba people and related ethnic groups. BaBemba means the people of the lake, referring to Lake Bangweulu in Northern Zambia, now the Luapula Province.

Lala-Bisa is a language closely related to Bemba but not considered a dialect of. It has between 200,000-500,000 speakers in Central Zambia (source: MultiTree). Due to the proximity to the DRC, Lala is also spoken there.

Nyanja/Chewa, or ciNyanja/ciChewa, is the national language of Malawi and the tongue spoken in the Eastern Province of Zambia and the capital city, Lusaka. Nyanja differs from Chewa in its influence from Bemba and English; in fact, Lusaka Nyanja is beginning to be considered its own dialect. CiNyanja also refers to a lake, in this case Lake Malawi.