Hausa language
Hausa is a Chadic language spoken by the Hausa people, the largest ethnic group in Sub-Saharan Africa, mainly within the territories of Southern Niger and Northern Nigeria. Historically, it has also developed into a lingua franca across much of Western Africa for purposes of trade.
Hausa is a member of the Afroasiatic language family and is the most widely spoken language within the Chadic branch of that family. Ethnologue estimated that it was spoken as a first language by some 47 million people and as a second language by another 25 million, bringing the total number of Hausa speakers to an estimated 72 million. By more recent estimations, Hausa is estimated to be spoken by 100–150 million people, making it the most spoken indigenous African language.
Classification
Hausa belongs to the West Chadic languages subgroup of the Chadic languages group, which in turn is part of the Afroasiatic language family. Other Afroasiatic languages are Semitic languages including Arabic, Aramaic languages, Hebrew, extinct Phoenician, the extinct Akkadian, as well as the Ethio-Semitic Amharic, Tigre, Tigrinya, and Gurage; Berber languages; Cushitic languages including Somali and Oromo; other Chadic languages including Glavda, Babur, Mwaghavul, Tera, Tangale, Karekare, Bole, Sayawa, Bwatiye, Ngas, Bade, Gwandara, Galambu, Pali, Higi, Ron, Duhwa, Margi, Kilba, Duwai and many others.Non-Afroasiatic influences
has found that Hausa in fact has many words that are not found in other Chadic languages. Because of this, Hausa is not actually representative of the Chadic group. This is because Hausa had borrowed from Adamawa, Plateau, Kainji, Nupoid, and other Benue-Congo languages during its expansion across the Nigerian Middle Belt. While those languages became assimilated, many of their words had changed the lexicon of Hausa. Some likely influence from vanished Nilo-Saharan languages on Hausa was also proposed by Blench. Blench lists these Hausa words of likely Benue-Congo origin:| nine | tárà |
| mother/woman | uwaa |
| to wash | wankèè |
| bed | gado |
| red, bright red | jaa |
| year | shekara |
| porcupine | beguwa |
| agama lizard | ƙadangare |
| water | ruwaa |
| sun, day | rana |
| egg | ƙwǎy |
| lion | záákii |
| leopard | dààmísàà |
| month, moon | wátàà |
| hare | zóómóó |
| scorpion | kunāma |
| want/need/like/love/wish | poo |
| gourd | kondo |
| doctor | bokaa |
| hunger | yúnwàà |
| shoe | tākalmi |
| spear-grass | tofa |
| kind, sort | iri |
| dance | ráwáá |
| stream | rafi |
| ram | rago |
| baboon | goggo, gwaggo |
| war | yāƙi |
| axe | gātari |
| good, right | dede |
| bulrush millet | maiwa |
| iburu | iburu |
| half | raabi |
| village/settlement | tungaa |
| female breast | mààmáá |
| flat rock | fā, pā |
| shelter | bukka |
| chew | tauna, tamna |
| meat | náamàa |
| oil | mai |
| pumpkin | kàbééwàà |
Geographic distribution
Native speakers of Hausa, the Hausa people, are mostly found in Niger, in Northern Nigeria, and in Chad. Furthermore, the language is used as a lingua franca by non-native speakers in most of Northern Nigeria and Southern Niger, and as a trade language across a much larger swathe of West Africa and parts of Sudan.Dialects
Traditional dialects
Eastern Hausa dialects include Dauranci in Daura, Kananci in Kano, Bausanci in Bauchi, Gudduranci in Katagum Misau and part of Borno, and Hadejanci in Hadejiya.Western Hausa dialects include Sakkwatanci in Sokoto, Katsinanci in Katsina, Arewanci in Gobir, Adar, Kebbi, and Zamfara, and Kurhwayanci in Kurfey in Niger. Katsina is transitional between Eastern and Western dialects. Sokoto is used in a variety of classical Hausa literature, and is often known as Classical Hausa.
Northern Hausa dialects include Arewa and Arewaci.
Zazzaganci in Zazzau is the major Southern dialect.
The Daura and Kano dialect are the standard. The BBC, Deutsche Welle, Radio France Internationale and Voice of America offer Hausa services on their international news web sites using Dauranci and Kananci. In recent language development Zazzaganci took over the innovation of writing and speaking the current Hausa language use.
Northernmost dialects and loss of tonality
The western to eastern Hausa dialects of Kurhwayanci, Damagaram and Aderawa, represent the traditional northernmost limit of native Hausa communities. These are spoken in the northernmost sahel and mid-Saharan regions in west and central Niger in the Tillaberi, Tahoua, Dosso, Maradi, Agadez and Zinder regions. While mutually comprehensible with other dialects, the northernmost dialects have slight grammatical and lexical differences owing to frequent contact with the Zarma, Fula, and Tuareg groups and cultural changes owing to the geographical differences between the grassland and desert zones. These dialects also have the quality of bordering on non-tonal pitch accent dialects.This link between non-tonality and geographic location is not limited to Hausa alone, but is exhibited in other northern dialects of neighbouring languages; such as differences within the Songhay language, and within the Soninke language.
Ghanaian Hausa dialect
The Ghanaian Hausa dialect, spoken in Ghana, Togo, and western Ivory Coast, is a distinct western native Hausa dialect-bloc with adequate linguistic and media resources available. Separate smaller Hausa dialects are spoken by an unknown number of Hausa further west in parts of Burkina Faso, and in the Haoussa Foulane, Badji Haoussa, Guezou Haoussa, and Ansongo districts of northeastern Mali, but there are very little linguistic resources and research done on these particular dialects at this time.Gaananci forms a separate group from other Western Hausa dialects, as it now falls outside the contiguous Hausa-dominant area, and is usually identified by the use of c for ky, and j for gy. This is attributed to the fact that Ghana's Hausa population descend from Hausa-Fulani traders settled in the zongo districts of major trade-towns up and down the previous Asante, Gonja and Dagomba kingdoms stretching from the sahel to coastal regions, in particular the cities of Tamale, Salaga, Bawku, Bolgatanga, Achimota, Nima and Kumasi.
Gaananci exhibits noted inflected influences from Zarma, Gur, Jula-Bambara, Akan, and Soninke, as Ghana is the westernmost area in which the Hausa language is a major lingua-franca among sahelian/Muslim West Africans, including both Ghanaian and non-Ghanaian zango migrants primarily from the northern regions, or Mali and Burkina Faso. Ghana also marks the westernmost boundary in which the Hausa people inhabit in any considerable number. Immediately west and north of Ghana, Hausa is abruptly replaced with Dioula-Bambara as the main sahelian/Muslim lingua-franca of what become predominantly Manding areas, and native Hausa-speakers plummet to a very small urban minority.
Because of this, and the presence of surrounding Akan, Gbe, Gur and Mande languages, Gaananci was historically isolated from the other Hausa dialects. Despite this difference, grammatical similarities between Sakkwatanci and Ghanaian Hausa determine that the dialect, and the origin of the Ghanaian Hausa people themselves, are derived from the northwestern Hausa area surrounding Sokoto.
Hausa is also widely spoken by non-native Gur, and Mandé Ghanaian Muslims, but differs from Gaananci, and rather has features consistent with non-native Hausa dialects.
Other native dialects
Hausa is also spoken in various parts of Cameroon and Chad, which combined the mixed dialects of Northern Nigeria and Niger. In addition, Arabic has had a great influence in the way Hausa is spoken by the native Hausa speakers in these areas.Non-native Hausa
In West Africa, Hausa's use as a lingua franca has given rise to a non-native pronunciation that differs vastly from native pronunciation by way of key omissions of implosive and ejective consonants present in native Hausa dialects, such as ɗ, ɓ and kʼ/ƙ, which are pronounced by non-native speakers as d, b and k respectively. This creates confusion among non-native and native Hausa speakers, as non-native pronunciation does not distinguish words like ' and '. Another difference between native and non-native Hausa is the omission of vowel length in words and change in the standard tone of native Hausa dialects. Use of masculine and feminine gender nouns and sentence structure are usually omitted or interchanged, and many native Hausa nouns and verbs are substituted with non-native terms from local languages.Non-native speakers of Hausa numbered more than 25 million and, in some areas, live close to native Hausa. It has replaced many other languages especially in the north-central and north-eastern part of Nigeria and continues to gain popularity in other parts of Africa as a result of Hausa movies and music which spread out throughout the region.
Hausa-based pidgins
There are several pidgin forms of Hausa. Barikanchi was formerly used in the colonial army of Nigeria. Gibanawa is currently in widespread use in Jega in northwestern Nigeria, south of the native Hausa area.Phonology
Consonants
Hausa has between 23 and 25 consonant phonemes depending on the speaker.The three-way contrast between palatalized velars, plain velars, and labialized velars is found only before long and short, e.g. , , . Before front vowels, only palatalized and labialized velars occur, e.g. vs. . Before rounded vowels, only labialized velars occur, e.g. .
Other analysis suggest the presence of the three additional phonemes.
Glottalic consonants
Hausa has glottalic consonants at four or five places of articulation. They require movement of the glottis during pronunciation and have a staccato sound.They are written with modified versions of Latin letters. They can also be denoted with an apostrophe, either before or after depending on the letter, as shown below.
- ɓ / b', an implosive consonant,, sometimes ;
- ɗ / d', an implosive, sometimes ;
- ts', an ejective consonant, or, according to the dialect;
- ch', an ejective
- ƙ / k', an ejective ; and are separate consonants;
- ƴ / 'y is a palatal approximant with creaky voice,, found in only a small number of high-frequency words. Historically it developed from palatalized.
Vowels
; Monophthongs: Short vowels:.
Long vowels:.
In comparison with the long vowels, the short can be similar in quality to the long vowels, mid-centralized to or centralized to.
Medial can be neutralized to, with the rounding depending on the environment.
Medial are neutralized with.
The short can be either similar in quality to the long, or it can be as high as, with possible intermediate pronunciations.
; Diphthongs:.
Tones
Hausa is a tonal language. Each of its five vowels may have low tone, high tone or falling tone. In standard written Hausa, tone is not marked. In recent linguistic and pedagogical materials, tone is marked by means of diacritics.An acute accent may be used for high tone, but the usual practice is to leave high tone unmarked.
Morphology
Except for the Zaria and Bauchi dialects spoken south of Kano, Hausa distinguishes between masculine and feminine genders.Hausa, like the rest of the Chadic languages, is known for its complex, irregular pluralization of nouns. Noun plurals in Hausa are derived using a variety of morphological processes, such as suffixation, infixation, reduplication, or a combination of any of these processes. There are 20 plural classes proposed by Newman.
| Class | Affix | Singular | Plural | Gloss |
| 1 | a-a | sirdì | siràda | ‘saddle’ |
| 2 | a-e | gulbi | gulàbe | ‘stream’ |
| 3 | a-u | kurmì | kuràmu | ‘grove’ |
| 4 | -aCe | wuri | wuràre | ‘place’ |
| 5 | -ai | malàm | malàmai | ‘teacher’ |
| 6 | -anni | watà | wàtànni | ‘moon’ |
| 7 | -awa | talàkà | talakawa | ‘commoner’ |
| 8 | -aye | zomo | zomàye | ‘hare’ |
| 9 | -Ca | tabò | tabba | ‘scar’ |
| 10 | -Cai | tudù | tùddai | ‘high ground’ |
| 11 | -ce2 | ciwò | cìwàce-cìwàce | ‘illness’ |
| 12 | -Cuna | cikì | cikkunà | ‘belly’ |
| 13 | -e2 | camfì | càmfe-càmfe | ‘superstition’ |
| 14 | -i | tàurarò | tàuràri | ‘star’ |
| 15 | -oCi | tagà | tagogi | ‘window’ |
| 16 | -u | kujèra | kùjèru | ‘chair’ |
| 17 | u-a | cokàli | cokuà | ‘spoon’ |
| 18 | -uka | layò | layukà | ‘lane’ |
| 19 | -una | rìga | rigunà | ‘grown’ |
| 20 | X2 | àkàwu | àkàwu-àkàwu | ‘clerk’ |
Writing systems
''Boko'' (Latin)
Hausa's modern official orthography is a Latin-based alphabet called boko, which was introduced in the 1930s by the British colonial administration.| A a | B b | Ɓ ɓ | C c | D d | Ɗ ɗ | E e | F f | G g | H h | I i | J j | K k | Ƙ ƙ | L l |
| M m | N n | O o | R r | S s | Sh sh | T t | Ts ts | U u | W w | Y y | Z z | ʼ | ||
The letter ƴ is used only in Niger; in Nigeria it is written ʼy.
Tone and vowel length are not marked in writing. So, for example, "from" and "battle" are both written daga. The distinction between and is not always marked.
''Ajami'' (Arabic)
Hausa has also been written in ajami, an Arabic alphabet, since the early 17th century. The first known work to be written in Hausa is Riwayar Nabi Musa by Abdullahi Suka in the 17th century. There is no standard system of using ajami, and different writers may use letters with different values. Short vowels are written regularly with the help of vowel marks, which are seldom used in Arabic texts other than the Quran. Many medieval Hausa manuscripts in ajami, similar to the Timbuktu Manuscripts, have been discovered recently; some of them even describe constellations and calendars.In the following table, short and long e are shown along with the Arabic letter for t.
| Latin | Arabic ajami | |
| a | ||
| a | ||
| b | ||
| ɓ | , | |
| c | ||
| d | ||
| ɗ | , | |
| e | ||
| e | ||
| f | ||
| g | ||
| h | ||
| i | ||
| i | ||
| j | ||
| k | ||
| ƙ | , | |
| l | ||
| m | ||
| n | ||
| o | ||
| o | ||
| r | , | |
| s | ||
| sh | ||
| t | ||
| ts | , | |
| u | ||
| u | ||
| w | ||
| y | ||
| z | ||
| ʼ |
Other systems
Hausa is one of three indigenous languages of Nigeria which has been rendered in braille.At least three other writing systems for Hausa have been proposed or "discovered". None of these are in active use beyond perhaps some individuals.
- A Hausa alphabet supposedly of ancient origin and in use in north of Maradi, Niger.
- A script that apparently originated with the writing/publishing group Raina Kama in the 1980s.
- A script called "Tafi" proposed in the 1970s