Bemé

Bemé
Poccasin Creole, Poccasin Pidgin, Poccasinese
bemeh, bemetak, kriyal
Pronunciation	[bemɛ]
Created by	Jukethatbox
Date	2025
Native to	Poccasin Archipelago
Ethnicity	Various
Native speakers	15 million (2025)
Language family	Poccasin English Bemé
Standard form	Tak Bemeh
Dialects	Kasimbo Bemeh Basilek Bemeh Agrow Bemeh
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Official language in	Poccasin Federation
Regulated by	Tak eh Bemeh!

Bemé (/bəˈmeɪ̯/ buh-MAY; bemeh, pronounced [bemɛ]), also called Poccasin Creole, Poccasin Pidgin and Poccasinese, is an English creole and pidgin language spoken in the Poccasin Archipelago. It is widely spoken as a first language in Cassim Po and is by far the predominantly spoken language in many other urban areas in the Poccasins, but elsewhere in the archipelago it only holds pidgin language status, exclusively used to communicate between people of separate ethnicites; as such, it is not used at home in most of these areas.

Despite this varying status, Bemé is by far the most spoken language of the Poccasin Archipelago with around 15 million speakers as of 2025; native speakers with Bemé as their mother tongue, primarily inhabiting Cassim Po, number around 14,565. This high amount of speakers can be mostly attributed to two factors: extensive British and later American colonisation, as well as widespread teaching of the language. Bemé is an official language and designated lingua franca of the Poccasin Federation, ensuring its continuous widespread usage after independence.

Etymology

The name Bemé is derived from the Kabamo phrase beme po kasin [ˈbeme pɔ ˈkɑsin], literally meaning "nation of the red mountain", it is also the origin of the English exonym Poccasin and Poccasinese.

Beme and Bemé

The words Beme and Bemé, both derived from Kabamo beme, mean two distinct things in English. Beme, (/ˈbɛmeɪ̯/ or /ˈbɛmiː/, BEH-may or BEH-mee) without the accent, is the widely used endonym of citizens of the Poccasin Federation; in the Poccasins specifically, bemeh in this context is mostly used to refer to the Poccasin federative government, akin to referring to the British government as simply "Westminster".

In contrast, Bemé, (/bəˈmeɪ̯/ buh-MAY) with an accent, is exclusively used in English to refer to the Bemé language. However, in Bemé itself, both bemeh "nation" and bemeh "Bemé" are homophones and homonyms, and their differing meanings is only discerned by context, such as:

Yu bemeh wan, yu deh bi dan, ena grown bela sky.

versus

"Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven." (Matthew 6:10)

Spik bemeh gudgud la?

"Do you speak Bemé very well?"

However, in recent years, some internet users have, through hypercorrection, started orthographically distinguishing the two meanings by capitalising bemeh "Bemé" as Bemeh or in some cases BEMEH, as is common in many indigenous languages of the Poccasins. However, this is generally considered non-standard.