{"id":1864,"date":"2018-04-16T17:54:31","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T16:54:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www0.sun.ac.za\/languagecentre\/?p=1864"},"modified":"2021-01-31T09:29:08","modified_gmt":"2021-01-31T09:29:08","slug":"black-panther-clicks-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/black-panther-clicks-away\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Panther clicks away"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is bad news and good news. The bad news is that you cannot go to Wakanda for a holiday. The good news is that you can<\/em> learn the language of Wakanda with the help of the Language Centre<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you are not a fan of superhero movies, some clarification may be necessary. Wakanda is the fictional homeland of the Marvel hero Black Panther, the central character in the recently released film<\/a> of the same name. Thanks to its large deposits of the fictional metal vibranium, Wakanda has the most advanced technology in the world.<\/p>\n

And what language do they speak in this country with spaceships and hover bikes?<\/p>\n

IsiXhosa.<\/p>\n

Although the Wakandans speak English when they want to (to paraphrase the character Okoye), the use of isiXhosa is woven into scenes in such a way that the audience is left in no doubt that isiXhosa is the language Wakandans use \u2013 whether strategising<\/a> or talking to loved ones.<\/p>\n

Using an existing language is unusual for science fiction and fantasy on screen, which often has a language made to order (think of Klingon in the Star Trek<\/em> franchise, Na\u2019vi in Avatar<\/em> and Dothraki in the series Game of Thrones<\/em>).<\/p>\n

The adoption of isiXhosa in the Marvel universe is due to John Kani, who played king T\u2019Chaka in Captain America: Civil War<\/em> and Black Panther<\/em>, and to a little bit of serendipity. The South African acting great argued \u2013 persuasively as it turned out \u2013 that his character would not be speaking English to his on-screen son, T\u2019Challa (played by Chadwick Boseman). Kani improvised the line in isiXhosa and Boseman, who had previously worked in South Africa with a South African film crew, knew enough isiXhosa to respond. The scene worked beautifully. And so it came to pass that a language spoken by more than 8 million South Africans became the language of Wakanda.<\/p>\n

Phambili ngesiXhosa, phambili!*<\/em><\/p>\n

*\u2019Phambili\u2019 means \u2018forward\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"

Marvel superhero, Black Panther<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is bad news and good news. The bad news is that you cannot go to Wakanda for a holiday. The good news is that you can learn the language of Wakanda with the help of the Language Centre. If you are not a fan of superhero movies, some clarification may be necessary. Wakanda is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9620,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,72,68,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-isixhosa-articles","category-dialogos","category-our-languages","category-recent-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1864"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9621,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1864\/revisions\/9621"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}