Mistake in the Fandom!
That's right, there's something wrong with a certain piece of information, and it's caused many resulting errors...
That misleading piece of information is in the translation of "Ingonyama nengw' enamabala". Everybody has it translated as "Here is a Lion and a Tiger." This is WRONG! I start you off with a breif primer in Zulu...
Every noun (person, place, or thing) in zulu belongs to a class. These classes are depicted by a noun prefix at the beginning of the word. In all senses, a word is not complete if it does not have its appropriate noun prefix. Refer to the following table:
| Singular Prefixes | Plural Prefixes |
| Class 1 | um(u)- | Class 2 | aba- |
| Class 1a | u- | Class 2a | o- |
| Class 3 | um(u)- | Class 4 | imi- |
| Class 5 | i(li)- | Class 6 | ama- |
| Class 7 | isi- | Class 8 | izi- |
| Class 9 | in-/im- | Class 10 | izin-/izim- |
| Class 11 | u(lu)- | * | Ref: Class 10 |
| Class 12 | ubu- |
| Class 13 | uku- |
Note: Classes 12 and 13 have no plural, and class 11 takes the plural of class 10.
The class I'd like to focus on is class 9, where the root word -ngonyama lies. Note that if the root word begins with an "N" in this class, the "N" is dropped from the prefix.
The prefix of a noun allows a word to form what in English is a singlular or plural word: Ingonyama: A Lion. Izingonyama: Lions. All lone nouns are formed like this, with very little exception.
Now, the word "and" (ne-), which, when saying "this and that", is required. This is where the confusion lays, and many overlook a slight error. The true translation of "Ingonyama nengw' enamabala", is "A Lion and a Leopard (-ngwe) come to this open place." True, the word "Nengwe" does mean "Tiger", but to say "A Lion and a Tiger", you would add "ne-" to the root word -nengwe, creating "Nenengwe". Problem! Not what appears in the song... What does appear in the song is "Ingonyama" (A Lion) "nengwe" (and a LEOPARD) "enamabala" (come to this open place [-bala, open place]). Nengwe is simply the root word "-ngwe" (leopard), with the word "and" (ne-) tacked onto it, like it should be. A Lion and a Leopard come to this open place. This makes a bit more sense, since Tigers don't live in Africa. :)
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