film<\/a> was first released, people are only just realising what the lyrics at the sound of The Circle of Life actually mean.<\/p>\nComedian Learnmore Jonasi appeared on the One54 Podcast, hosted by Akbar Gbajabiamila and comedian Godfrey, which celebrates and explores the stories, culture, and achievements of Africa’s 54 countries.<\/p>\n
While on the podcast, the trio started speaking about The Lion King, with Jonasi telling viewers what the Zulu song lyrics meant in the most simple terms.<\/p>\n
He claimed: “It means ‘look, there’s a lion. Oh my god’.” The co-hosts of the podcast burst out laughing as they could not believe that is what the lyrics actually said.<\/p>\n
Godfrey said: “This whole time, I thought it was this beautiful, majestic spiritual s***. They have made billions off that.”<\/p>\n
Commenters on the video were also stunned by the meaning of the lyrics, and couldn’t help but laugh.<\/p>\n
One person said: “This man ain\u2019t about to destroy my childhood with all of this accuracy! I love The Lion King and that\u2019s that!”<\/p>\n
A second said: “This is really awesome. I\u2019ve never laughed so hard than when he said it means, ‘look there\u2019s a lion’.”<\/p>\n
However, people took to the comments to clarify that they thought the translation of the song was incorrect.<\/p>\n
One person said: “The translation is wrong about that song. Though I understand Zulu is not his home language. I’m Zulu and that basically translates to “here’s our lion” and what it really means in our culture is “Here’s our King! ” It’s like a chanting in a way.”<\/p>\n
A second said: “Translation is overly simplified. In Nguni languages a lion can be referred to ibhubesi (general speak) or ingonyama which refers to the majesty of the creature and as a reference to the king.<\/p>\n
“The opening words “nansi ingonyama bakithi” means “look, here is his majesty”. Very strong statement.”<\/p>\n
Learnmore Jonasi did admit that he had an issue with The Lion King over the Lions in the film having American accents while the monkey had an African accent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Circle of Life is one of the most iconic songs from Disney’s The Lion King, but people…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,143578,23310,163211,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-450942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-the-lion-king","tag-the-walt-disney-company","tag-the-walt-disney-company-films","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1_The-Lion-King-1994-Cartoon-film.jpg\")
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