My Lion King Forum

Why are they all of a sudden pooping up with so many African catchphrases? I guess it must be for the kids but seriously, for me they are so annoying! except maybe when Bunga sang about his, that was kinda catchy!

Because this is Africa.

Africa has a lot of catchphrases

I'm glad to know that we're learning more African phrases, but they have to tone them down a bit cause when you repeat the same catchphrases like 5 or 6 times in one episode, it gets very annoying fast. In Return of the Roar, Bunga kept saying "Zuka Zuma" yet in his song, he doesn't even mention what it means. Same thing for Kion's "Hevi Kabisa". He always says it when in shock, yet we're not even told what it means.

You shouldn't have to expect a viewer of the show to look up the meaning of the Swahili phrase online without being told in the show first because I had to do that after watching ROTR and the Rise of Makuu.

Bunga does say what it means. It means "Pop up, Dive in".

And hevi kabisa is just that. An expression of shock. It's on the Disney blog.
http://blogs.disney.com/oh-my-disney/20 ... rah-mirza/

but kids wont beable to catch that, he doesn't say that as clearly as he should.

Kids are smarter than you think. They'll figure it out.

And "Pop up, Pop up (zuka zuka) Dive in, dive in (zama zama)" is pretty obvious.

I picked it up pretty quickly, pop up pop up zuka zuka dive in dive in Zama Zama go go go! Zoom zom zom
They put the meaning twice and phrase twice so that you can understand.

Exactly. Kids are also really good at context clues in TV shows and images.

yeah, I like that we aren't directly given most of the translations for the catchphrases because it forces you to rely on context clues, which is especially cool for the target audience of young children.