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Jokes on You: Trevor Noah Trolls Oscars Audience With Xhosa Humor

Only people who speak Xhosa, an indigenous South African language, would have understood the joke

Talk about an inside joke.

When comedian and “Daily Show” host Trevor Noah went on stage at the Oscars to introduce best picture nominee “Black Panther,” Noah told a multi-layered joke that only a few people would be able to understand.

“Growing up as a young boy in Wakanda, I would see T'Challa flying over our village, and he would remind me of a great Xhosa phrase,” Noah, who is from South Africa, said. “He says 'abelungu abazi uba ndiyaxoka' — which means, ‘In times like these, we are stronger when we fight together than when we try to fight apart.’” 

Those who speak Xhosa know that what Noah really said is, “White people don’t know I’m lying.”

Xhosa speaking Twitter users who got the joke could not stop laughing.

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“I think @Trevornoah just pulled off one of the funniest stunts ever at the #Oscars,” one user tweeted. “Only #xhosa speaking South Africans will know...well played! Hahahaha!!”

Other users could tweet nothing but laughing and crying emojis. 

The stunt is just as funny as another inside joke Noah revealed during a June 2018 episode of "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert." 

Only a true Trevor Noah fan would have realized that the voice inside every spaceship in “Black Panther” was, in fact, the voice of Noah himself.

“I’m like, ‘I will be the voice of the computer in the background, the computer that runs everything’ — every spaceship you see is me,” Noah jokingly told Colbert. “A lot of people think I just did the lines there, but I’m everything. I’m the ship as well. They got me in to play the ship.”

It seems Noah has a talent for telling a well-hidden joke.

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