Musings on the Wakandan language

[Leoparis]

T'Challa's grandfather is named Azzuri the Wise, Azzari and Chanda. Chanda was recently explained as a shortening of T'Chanda and Azzari as a regnal name.

Don McGregor wrote a dialogue between T'Challa and Kevin in Jungle Action 19, "Ta Challa?" "Without the T" which made people believe the first T was supposed to be silent.

I understand it differently. The Ch- is not an English ch- (tsh) but a French one (sh), like in "chivalry".

So in the dialog above Kevin must have pronounced "Ta-tshalla" and T'Challa corrected him by saying he's not supposed to pronounce the second t sound (the one in English ch-). It just would not make any sense that a t apostrophe is silent.

Azzuri is also spelled Azzari. This makes it very likely that the u in Azzuri is pronounced as in run. In several African pronunciations that -u- sound is rendered as /a/ as in ran. The dual spelling would point to English and French influences in the way Wakandas spell their names with the Latin alphabet.

As for the meaning of it, I can make some guesses. In recent Wakandan stories, there has been more and more Islamic and Arabic characteristics.

In that line of reasoning, Azzuri could be an article followed by a noun. The Arabic article al- turns to az- in front of a word starting with z- (az-Zubayr).

Since Azzuri is called the Wise, the most likely explanation is that Azzuri means "the Wise" in Wakandan. When his regnal name is mentioned, people provide a translation because the regnal name is primarily chosen for its meaning.