| Hausa | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| هَوْسَ | ||||
| Spoken in | Benin Burkina Faso Cameroon Ghana Niger Nigeria Sudan Togo |
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| Ethnicity | Hausa people | |||
| Native speakers | 25 million (1991) 18 million as a second language |
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| Language family |
Afro-Asiatic
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| Writing system | Latin, Arabic | |||
| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-1 | ha | |||
| ISO 639-2 | hau | |||
| ISO 639-3 | hau | |||
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Hausa is the Chadic language with the largest number of speakers, spoken as a first language by about 25 million people, and as a second language by about 18 million more, an approximate total of 43 million people.[1] Hausa is one of Africa's largest spoken languages after Arabic, French, English, Portuguese and Swahili.
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Hausa belongs to the West Chadic languages subgroup of the Chadic languages group, which in turn is part of the Afro-Asiatic language family.
Along with the Chadic language branch, the Afro-Asiatic language family also includes 4 other branches:
Native speakers of Hausa, the Hausa people are mostly to be found in the African country of Niger and in the north of Nigeria, but the language is used as a trade language across a much larger swathe of West Africa (Benin, Ghana, Cameroon, Togo, Cote d'Ivoire etc.), Central Africa and western Sudan (Chad, Central African Republic, Sudan, Equatorial Guinea), particularly amongst Muslims. Radio stations like BBC, Radio France Internationale, China Radio International, Voice of Russia, Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, and IRIB broadcast in Hausa. It is taught at universities in Africa and around the world.
Eastern Hausa dialects include Kananci which is spoken in Kano, Bausanchi in Bauchi, Dauranchi in Daura, Gudduranci in Katagum Misau and part of Borno and Hadejanci in Hadejiya.
Western Hausa dialects include Sakkwatanci in Sokoto, Kutebanci in Taraba, Katsinanci in Katsina, Arewanci in Gobir, Adar, Kebbi, and Zamfara, and Kurhwayanci in Kurfey in Niger. Katsina is transitional between Eastern and Western dialects.
Northern Hausa dialects include Arewa and Arawa.
Zazzaganci in Zaria is the major Southern dialect.
The Kano dialect (Kananci) is the standard. The BBC, Deutsche Welle and Voice of America offer Hausa services on its international news web site using Kananci.
The western Hausa dialects of Kurhwayanci, Daragaram and Aderawa, represent the traditional northernmost limit of native Hausa communities. These are spoken in the arid zone bordering, and considerably within, the Sahara desert of west and central Niger in the Tillaberi, Tahoua, Dosso, Maradi, Agadez and Zinder regions. While mutually comprehensible with other dialects (especially Sakkwatanci, and to a lesser extent Gaananci), the northernmost dialects have slight grammatical and lexical differences owing to frequent contact with the Zarma and Tuareg groups and cultural changes owing to the geographical differences between the grassland and desert zones. These dialects also border on the pitch accents of non-Hausa speakers, owing to between Berber and Arabic speakers.
This effect is not limited to Hausa alone, but other northern dialects of neighbouring languages; such as the difference within Songhay language (between the northernmost Koyra Chiini and Koyraboro Senni dialects of Timbuktu and Gao, and the Zarma dialect, spoken from western Niger to northern Ghana), and within the Soninke language (between the northernmost dialects of Imraguen and Nemadi spoken in east-central Mauritania, and the southern dialects of Senegal, Mali and the sahel).
The Ghanaian Hausa dialect (Gaananci), spoken in Ghana and western Côte d'Ivoire, represents the westernmost spoken Hausa dialect in geography. Gaananci forms a separate group, 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. Because of this, and the surrounding Akan, Gur and Mande languages, Gaananci was historically isolated from the other Hausa dialects.[2] 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.[3]
There are inflected influences from Zarma, Gur and Soninke in Gaananci, owing to the area being the linguistic boundary between the predominantly Mandinka and Gur peoples, originating to the west in Mali, and the Hausa and Zarma, owing their origins to the east in the traditional Hausa lands in northern Nigeria and Niger.
Hausa is also widely spoken by non-native Gur and Mande Ghanaian Muslims, but differs from Gaananci, and rather has features consistent with non-native Hausa dialects.
Hausa is also spoken various parts of Cameroun and Chad, which combined the mixed dialects of Northern Nigeria and Niger Republic, French has made a great influence in the way Hausa is spoken by the native Hausa speakers.
Non-native Hausa arises from Hausa's use as a lingua franca in West Africa. Non-native pronunciation vastly differs 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 daidai ("correct") and ɗaiɗai ("one-by-one"). 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 (ranging from native Fulani and Tuareg Hausa-speakers omitting tone altogether, to Hausa speakers with Gur or Yoruba mother tongues using additional tonal structures similar to those used in their native languages). Use of masculine and feminine gender nouns and sentence structure are usually omitted or interchanged, and many native Hausa nouns and verbs are substituted for non-native terms from local languages.
Non-native speakers of Hausa number around 25 million, and in some areas live close to native Hausa.Hausa has replaced many other languages especially in the North Central and North Eastern part of Nigeria, and continue gaining popularity in other parts of Africa as a result of Hausa movies and musics which spread out throughout the region.
Barikanchi is a pidgin formerly used in the military of Nigeria.
Hausa has between 23 and 25 consonant phonemes depending on the speaker.
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| palatalized | Plain | labialized | Plain | palatalized | ||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ||||||||
| Stop | voiceless | t | t͡ʃ | c | k | kʷ | ʔ | ʔʲ | ||
| voiced | b | d | d͡ʒ | ɟ | ɡ | ɡʷ | ||||
| ejective | t͡sʼ | t͡ʃʼ | cʼ | kʼ | kʷʼ | |||||
| implosive | ɓ | ɗ | ||||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | ɸ | s | ʃ | h | |||||
| voiced | z | |||||||||
| Trill | r | |||||||||
| Flap | ɽ | |||||||||
| Approximant | l | j | w | |||||||
The three-way contrast between palatalized velars /c ɟ cʼ/, plain velars /k ɡ kʼ/, and labialized velars /kʷ ɡʷ kʷʼ/ is found only before long or short /a/, e.g. /cʼaːɽa/ ('grass'), /kʼaːɽaː/ ('to increase'), /kʷʼaːɽaː/ ('shea-nuts'). Before front vowels, only palatalized and labialized velars occur, e.g. /ciːʃiː/ ('jealousy') vs. /kʷiːɓiː/ ('side of body'). Before rounded vowels, only labialized velars occur, e.g. /kʷoːɽaː/ ('ringworm').[4]
Hausa has glottalic consonants (implosives and ejectives) at four or five places of articulation (depending on the dialect). 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.
b' / ɓ, an implosive consonant, IPA [ɓ], or sometimes [ʔb];
d' / ɗ, an implosive [ɗ], sometimes [dʔ];
ts', an ejective consonant, [tsʼ] or [sʼ] according to the dialect;
ch', an ejective [tʃʼ] (does not occur in Kano dialect)
k' / ƙ, an ejective [kʼ]; [kʲʼ] and [kʷʼ] are separate consonants;
'y is a palatalized glottal stop, found in only a small number of high frequency words. Historically it developed from palatalized [ɗ].
Hausa has 5 phonemic vowel sounds which are both single and long, giving a total of 10 vowel phonemes which are called Monophthongs and 4 joint vowel sound that are called Diphthongs giving a total number of 14 vowel phonemes.
Monophthongs are:
Single Vowels :/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/ and /u/. Long Vowels:/aa/, /ee/, /ii/, /oo/, and /uu/.
Diphthongs are: /ai/, /au/, /iu/ and /ui/.
Hausa is a tone language. Each of its five vowels a, e, i, o and u may have low tone, high tone and falling tone.
For representing tones accented vowels may be used:
à è ì ò ù (low tone)
á é í ó ú (high tone)
â ê î ô û (falling tone)
In standard written Hausa, tone is not marked. However it is needed for disambiguation and thus it is marked in dictionaries and other scientific works.
Hausa's modern official orthography is a Latin-based alphabet called boko, which was imposed 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| /a/ | /b/ | /ɓ/ | /tʃ/ | /d/ | /ɗ/ | /e/ | /ɸ/ | /ɡ/ | /h/ | /i/ | /(d)ʒ/ | /k/ | /kʼ/ | /l/ |
| M m | N n | O o | R r | S s | Sh sh | T t | Ts ts | U u | W w | Y y | (Ƴ ƴ) | Z z | ʼ | |
| /m/ | /n/ | /o/ | /r/, /ɽ/ | /s/ | /ʃ/ | /t/ | /(t)sʼ/ | /u/ | /w/ | /j/ | /ʔʲ/ | /z/ | /ʔ/ |
The letter ƴ is used only in Niger; in Nigeria it is written ʼy.
Tone, vowel length, and the distinction between /r/ and /ɽ/ (which does not exist for all speakers) are not marked in writing. So, for example, /daɡa/ "from" and /daːɡaː/ "battle" are both written daga.
Hausa has also been written in ajami, a variant of the Arabic script, since the early 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 similar to the Timbuktu Manuscripts written in the Ajami script, have been discovered recently some of them even describe constellations and calendars.[5]
In the following table, vowels are shown with the Arabic letter for t as an example.
| Latin | IPA | Arabic ajami |
|---|---|---|
| a | /a/ | ـَ |
| a | /aː/ | ـَا |
| b | /b/ | ب |
| ɓ | /ɓ/ | ب (same as b), ٻ (not used in Arabic) |
| c | /tʃ/ | ث |
| d | /d/ | د |
| ɗ | /ɗ/ | د (same as d), ط (also used for ts) |
| e | /e/ | تٜ (not used in Arabic) |
| e | /eː/ | تٰٜ (not used in Arabic) |
| f | /ɸ/ | ف |
| g | /ɡ/ | غ |
| h | /h/ | ه |
| i | /i/ | ـِ |
| i | /iː/ | ـِى |
| j | /(d)ʒ/ | ج |
| k | /k/ | ك |
| ƙ | /kʼ/ | ك (same as k), ق |
| l | /l/ | ل |
| m | /m/ | م |
| n | /n/ | ن |
| o | /o/ | ـُ (same as u) |
| o | /oː/ | ـُو (same as u) |
| r | /r/, /ɽ/ | ر |
| s | /s/ | س |
| sh | /ʃ/ | ش |
| t | /t/ | ت |
| ts | /(t)sʼ/ | ط (also used for ɗ), ڟ (not used in Arabic) |
| u | /u/ | ـُ (same as o) |
| u | /uː/ | ـُو (same as o) |
| w | /w/ | و |
| y | /j/ | ی |
| z | /z/ | ز ذ |
| ʼ | /ʔ/ | ع |
At least three other writing systems for Hausa have been proposed or "discovered." None of these are in active use beyond perhaps some individuals.
| For a list of words relating to Hausa language, see the Hausa language category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
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