That is, da may be pronounced [dʱa̤] (or, equivalently, [d̥a̤]). isiXhosa, the Language of Wakanda: Black Panther Unpacked #3 South African audiences must have felt a certain kind of wonder and excitement when they first heard the elegant language of their very own Xhosa people spoken by the Wakandans. AmaXhosa – Southern Ngunis. The more notable characteristic is their depressor effect on the tone of the syllable.[21]. The orthographic b in mb is the voiced plosive [mb]. Xhosa is a tonal Nguni Bantu language, part of the Niger-Congo language family, that uses Latin for its alphabet, and has a signed form of the language as well as Xhosa braille. The role of indigenous languages in South Africa is complex and ambiguous. I guess you could say that it just clicked in as a natural fit. Coogler was further inspired when he took a personal trip to South Africa prior to shooting Black Panther, where he befriended local people who spoke Xhosa. This came about because South African actor John Kani, a native of the Eastern Cape province who plays Wakandan King T'Chaka, is Xhosa and suggested that the directors of the fictional Civil War incorporate a dialogue in the language. John Kani, who plays King T'Chaka in … Besides pulmonic egressive sounds, which are found in all spoken languages, it has a series of ejective stops and one implosive stop. When plain voiceless clicks (c, x, q) are prenasalized, they become slack voiced nasal (ngc, ngx, ngq). Valiant efforts paid off, however, as the use of Xhosa adds an extra dimension of authenticity to the fictional world of Wakanda. Surprisingly, John Kani, the actor who played T’Chaka, is a speaker of Xhosa. It has perhaps the heaviest functional load of click consonants in a Bantu language (approximately tied with Yeyi), with one count finding that 10% of basic vocabulary items contained a click.[10]. Otherwise, they tend to be tenuis (plain) stops. Aspirated clicks become prenasalized ejected clicks. It’s also really hard to learn, according to the film’s actors, but the importance of an authentic African language in a blockbuster superhero movie cannot be underestimated. The language of instruction at universities in South Africa is English or Afrikaans, and Xhosa is taught as a subject, both for native and for non-native speakers. Their use in education has been governed by legislation, beginning with the Bantu Education Act, 1953. But those who speak the South African language of Xhosa know that what Noah actually said was "white people don't know I'm lying." Maho (2009) lists Mpondo (Pondo), Xesibe, Bomvana, Gaika (Ngqika), Gcaleka, Thembu, Mpondomise, Ndlambe, and Hlubi.[4]. “They got lines that morning.”. Xhosa is, to some extent, mutually intelligible with Zulu and Northern Ndebele, and other Nguni languages to a lesser extent. A language that involves clicking noises. “The language we used for Wakandan is called Xhosa,” Civil War co-director Joe Russo said to EW. The decision to have Xhosa be the official language of Wakanda was solidified by Chad, a … 4 Before monosyllabic stems in some words. [22] The Bantu ancestor of Xhosa did not have clicks, which attests to a strong historical contact with a San language that did. Xhosa is rich in uncommon consonants. See Sands & Gunnink (2019) "Clicks on the fringes of the Kalahari Basin Area." In keeping with many other Southern Bantu languages, Xhosa is an agglutinative language, with an array of prefixes and suffixes that are attached to root words. (In fact, to correctly pronounce “Xhosa,” the “X” begins with a click.) Another reason the Black Panther team decided on using Xhosa as Wakanda's official language has to do with one of the movie's central actors. The language of Black Panther is indeed a real tongue, spoken by millions of people. Similarly, the tenuis (plain) clicks are often glottalised, with a long voice onset time, but that is uncommon. Contextual translation of "black panther" into Xhosa. Xhosa is the English-given name for both the language and the people who speak the Xhosa language, distinguished by those speakers as AmaXhosa for the people, and isiXhosa for the language itself. Human translations with examples: mnyama, umbala, ingcuka, iibhloko, ndiyoyika, clonetype, ecaleni kwe. It takes a lot more than what happened to us to take that out of us.’”. Director Ryan Coogler was inspired to use Xhosa for two reasons. Despite Wakanda being an isolated country hundreds of miles away from Coogler’s native Oakland, Wakanda is still a place where sisters can prank their big brothers. Wakanda. (Native speakers, of course, insist it’s easier than it seems.) The original stanza was: Additional stanzas were written later by Sontonga and other writers, with the original verse translated into Sotho and Afrikaans, as well as English. James tries to learn Xhosa in Cape Town, and hears why its important for people there. The decision for Black Panther to speak Xhosa was quite a big one not just for Captain America: Civil War, but for the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, too. Bennie, along with John Ross (another missionary), set up a printing press in the Tyhume Valley and the first printed works in Xhosa came out in 1823 from the Lovedale Press in the Alice region of the Eastern Cape. Wakanda Is a Fake Country, but the African Language in ‘Black Panther’ Is Real Women in their traditional Xhosa attire in Durban, South Africa. South African veteran actor John Kani was highly responsible for IsiXhosa … But as the world gets to know Wakanda, some may wonder what language inspired the Wakandan tongue heard in the film. But, as with any language, Xhosa had a rich history of oral traditions from which the society taught, informed, and entertained one another. RELATED: Black Panther's Suit Got Serious Upgrades After Civil War Thanks to Black Widow "The language we used for Wakandan is called Xhosa. Tone, stress and vowel length are not indicated. Palatalisation is a change that affects labial consonants whenever they are immediately followed by /j/. The breathy voiced glottal fricative [ɦ] is sometimes spelled h. The ejectives tend to be ejective only in careful pronunciation or in salient positions and, even then, only for some speakers. The first Bible translation was in 1859, produced in part by Henry Hare Dugmore. [12] It is the second most common Bantu home language in South Africa as a whole. No change when the following consonant is itself a nasal. The story behind the language spoken in 'Black Panther' Xhosa, known affectionately as the 'click click language,' takes its name from a people in mostly southern Africa … isandla/izandla (hand/hands). The idea to use isiXhosa, one of South Africa's 11 official languages, in Black Panther came from South African actor and cast member John Kani who plays the father of the king T'Challa. Agreements usually reflect part of the original class with which the word agrees. Therefore, the absolute duration of voicing is the same as in tenuis stops. The verb is modified by affixes to mark subject, object, tense, aspect and mood. Xhosa is a tonal language with two inherent phonemic tones: low and high. An estimated 15% of Xhosa vocabulary is of San origin. [14] There is a small but significant Xhosa community of about 200,000 in Zimbabwe. All about Xhosa, the real language that Wakandans speak in 'Black Panther.'. Whenever /w/ follows a labial consonant, it changes to /j/, which then triggers palatalisation of the consonant. [23], Proportion of the South African population that speaks Xhosa at home, Webb, Vic. For Black Panther, director Ryan Coogler "wanted to make it a priority to use Xhosa as much as possible" in the script, and provided dialect coaches for the film's actors. Constructed language (conglang) is a consciously created language that resembles human or human-like conversation. When consonants are prenasalised, their pronunciation and spelling may change. Still, it was a process during shooting, where last-minute edits to the script would have the actors unlearning what they just learned. It’s one of the way the much anticipated Black Panther … Photo by Sabelo Mkhabela. For Black Panther, the actors learned is isiXhosa, a Buntu language characterized by click consonants. Why we care: The Wakandan language we hear characters speaking in Black Panther is totally real. Marvel’s Black Panther is a bonafide cultural phenomenon, with a current worldwide gross of over $700 million in just two weeks. Prenasalisation occurs in several contexts, including on roots with the class 9 prefix /iN-/, for example on an adjective which is feature-matching its noun: /iN- + ɬɛ/ → [intɬɛ] "beautiful" (of a class 9 word like inja "dog"). They are better described as slack voiced than as breathy voiced. [15] Also, a small community of Xhosa speakers (18,000) live in Quthing District, Lesotho. AmaXhosa migrated to the east coast of Africa and came across Khoisan-speaking people; "as a result of this contact, the Xhosa people borrowed some Khoisan words along with their pronunciation, for instance, the click sounds of the Khoisan languages". The word order is subject–verb–object, like in English. The Xhosa language employs 26 letters from the Latin alphabet. At present, Xhosa is used as the main language of instruction in many primary schools and some secondary schools, but is largely replaced by English after the early primary grades, even in schools mainly serving Xhosa-speaking communities. John Kani, the … At least 19 million people, in South Africa and combined with other countries, speak Xhosa. “I found out that his tribe – he was Xhosa – the rituals they do are very similar to things I do with my family. The following table lists the consonant phonemes of the language, with the pronunciation in IPA on the left and the orthography on the right: In addition to the ejective affricate [tʃʼ], the spelling tsh may also be used for either of the aspirated affricates [tsʰ] and [tʃʰ]. Danai Gurira at the South African premiere of Black Panther. Xhosa Culture Learn Xhosa Language | history | Customs & more facebook; twitter; google_plus; Email; Xhosa Culture Browsing tag. [16], Called isiXhosa sengingqi ('local Xhosa'), Xhosa has several dialects. (eds), These are analogous to the slack-voice nasals, "Xhosa alphabet, pronunciation and language", "isiNdebele for beginners. As of 2003[update] approximately 5.3 million Xhosa-speakers, the majority, live in the Eastern Cape, followed by the Western Cape (approximately 2 million), Gauteng (671,045), the Free State (246,192), KwaZulu-Natal (219,826), North West (214,461), Mpumalanga (46,553), the Northern Cape (51,228), and Limpopo (14,225). Like, almost identical,” Coogler described. 3 The placeholder N in the prefixes iN- and iiN- for m, n or no letter at all. Kani is a native of South Africa who speaks Xhosa. The murmured clicks, plosives and affricates are only partially voiced, with the following vowel murmured for some speakers. Nguni languages are, in turn, part of the much larger group of Bantu languages. In those same interviews, he also shared how Black Panther was extra special for him, because of the fact that Xhosa was part of it: “And it was extra special for … iliso (eye), uluhlu (list). As in other Bantu languages, nouns in Xhosa are classified into morphological classes, or genders (15 in Xhosa), with different prefixes for both singular and plural. [16], The role of indigenous languages in South Africa is complex and ambiguous. There was a scene where Tchaka and Tchalla talk in private. “The language we used for Wakandan is called Xhosa,” Civil War co-director Joe Russo said to EW. They refer to themselves as the amaXhosa and their language as Xhosa. It’s also very difficult to learn, and the actors of Black Panther noted that it was difficult to pick up during shooting. Northern Ndebele language in Africa", "South Africa Population grows to 44.8 Million", "Isixhosa Ulwimi Lwabantu Abangesosininzi eZimbabwe: Ukuphila Nokulondolozwa Kwaso", "Wakanda Is a Fake Country, but the African Language in 'Black Panther' is Real", Xhosa basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database, Commission for Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Community Rights, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Xhosa_language&oldid=999100104, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2003, All articles containing potentially dated statements, Articles needing examples from December 2018, Articles containing potentially dated statements from 1996, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Their use in education has been governed by legislation, beginning with the Bantu Education Act, 1953.[12]. [16] In the modern period, it has also borrowed, slightly, from both Afrikaans and English. When aspirated clicks (ch, xh, qh) are prenasalised, the silent letter k is added (nkc, nkx, nkq) to prevent confusion with the nasal clicks nc, nx, nq, and are actually distinct sounds. Approximately 19 million people in the world speak Xhosa, and it’s recognized as one of the 11 official languages of South Africa, and one of the 16 languages of Zimbabwe. There is a series of six dental clicks, represented by the letter ⟨c⟩, similar to the sound represented in English by "tut-tut" or "tsk-tsk"; a series of six alveolar lateral clicks, represented by the letter ⟨x⟩, similar to the sound used to call horses; and a series of alveolar clicks, represented by the letter ⟨q⟩, that sound somewhat like a cork pulled from a bottle. For Black Panther, the actors learned is isiXhosa, a Buntu language characterized by click consonants. Hlubi is the dialect in the former Ciskei; there is the more distinct Hlubi language further north, where Xhosa meets SeSotho. All of that being said, we are a friendly, honest company, based in London, UK, and this document is far scarier than we are! Additional phonemes are using sequences of multiple letters. This language however was difficult for the actors to learn. Xhosa culture shines on Black Panther movie premiere By XhosaCulture on February 7, 2018 Social media has been on cloud nine following the much-anticipated premiere of Hollywood’s 2018 Marvel superhero film “Black Panther” in late January 2018. 1 Before monosyllabic stems, e.g. Verbs use the following prefixes for the subject and object: The following is a list of phrases that can be used when one visits a region whose primary language is Xhosa: Xhosa-speaking people have inhabited coastal regions of southeastern Africa since before the 16th century. Noun (1) a large spotted feline of tropical America similar to the leopard; in some classifications considered a member of the genus Felis (2) a leopard in the black color phase (3) large American feline resembling a lion. The following table gives an overview of Xhosa noun classes, arranged according to singular-plural pairs. (In fact, to correctly pronounce “Xhosa,” the “X” begins with a click.) In Clem et al. John and Athandwa Kan i were the main language consultants on Black Panther. Kani believed having them speak an African language to one another instead of English was more authentic and there you go. John Kani, the actor who plays T’Challa’s father in the movie, speaks the language and taught it to Chadwick. The language is also studied as a subject. In the Marvel Universe, Wakanda exists as an isolated country that thrives thanks to its exclusive rights to the space mineral vibranium. The various parts of the sentence must agree in both class and number.[12]. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe films Captain America: Civil War and Black Panther, the language spoken in the fictional African nation of Wakanda is Xhosa. However, some of the letters have a different pronunciation than as in English. John Bennie was a Scottish Presbyterian missionary and early Xhosa linguist. Only phonemic, and thus reflected orthographically, for. Others call constructed language as invented, planned or artificial language. Xhosa /ˈkɔːsə, ˈkoʊsə/[5][6][7] (Xhosa: [ᵏǁʰɔsa]),[missing tone] also isiXhosa, is a Nguni Bantu language and one of the official languages of South Africa and Zimbabwe. 2002. “There were a couple of days where our cast gave us the side eye,” executive producer Nate Moore told the New York Times. The best-known performer of Xhosa songs outside South Africa was Miriam Makeba, whose Click Song #1 (Xhosa Qongqothwane) and "Click Song #2" (Baxabene Ooxam) are known for their large number of click sounds. Xhosa is part of the branch of Nguni languages known as Zunda languages, which also include Zulu, Southern Ndebele and Northern Ndebele. Now when I was cast to play again in the Black Panther I had already been asked what or how would you say this in Xhosa. T’Chaka’s actor Kani is actually African and knew a genuine african language Xhosa from South Africa. Long vowels are phonemic but are usually not written except for â and ä, which are each sequences of two vowels with different tones that are realized as long vowels with contour tones (â high–low = falling, ä low–high = rising). Moreover, Xhosa does not generally tolerate sequences of a labial consonant plus /w/. The /i/ vowel will be long in the penultimate syllable and short in the last syllable.[17]. There are moments and words that are dropped all over the place to locate that these people’s indigenous language is not English. 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