You say “Eee-Chingaa”, I say “Aye-Singa” – but how do the Zulus say it? We consulted a couple Zulu speakers and even received a pronunciation guide from Megan Wells to help us all out. As she told us:
“The I in Icinga is actually a Romanized representation of the Zulu click. The easiest way to approximate the click is by putting your tongue behind your top teeth and pulling it down, kind of like a tsk-tsk noise. The vowels on either side of the click are “eee” noises, like in “see”. There is no hard “g” sound in Icinga – the “ng” is pronounced like the end of “sing”. Finally, the “a” is pronounced like the “a” in “father”.
Just to be safe, we’ve thrown in a voice demo:
Have fun and Go Eee-tsk-eeengah!
