Wakandan Language

The Wakandan Language is a member of the Niger-Congo language family, related to Igbo and Yoruba.

Wakandan also uses a high percentage of loan words, primarily from Xhosa and Hsau.

Dictionary

37 Words.

Spoken by

• Wakandan

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Author's Note

We technically know a lot more MCU Wakandan words than are included in the dictionary. However, I'm deeply torn about the choice of the film-makers to have the Wakandans primarily speak Xhosa. On the one hand, I know it meant a lot to Xhosa speakers, especially those living in diaspora, to see their language represented in such a high profile movie. One the other hand, geographically it makes little sense for Xhosa to be spoken there, and I can't help feeling the choice was somewhat lazy on the part of the film-makers as it was chosen largely just because the actor who plays T'Chakka, John Kani, is a Xhosa speaker. If the Dark Elves can have an entire conlang for their single mediocre movie, it seems a bit suss that Wakanda doesn't get one. (This is unfortunately probably of factor of T'Challa first appearing in Civil War, a movie which wasn't focussed on Wakandan culture. I suspect if Black Panther was T'Challa's first appearance, we would have got either a conlang or a more logical choice of language). For that reason, and because Xhosa dictionaries already exist, the dictionary contains only words from the comics, or words which were created for the movies.