THE LANGUAGE

Hausa belongs to the Western subgroup of the Chadic language group. The Chadic group is part of the Afro-Asiatic language family. It is thought to have originated in Nubia (Sudan) before a migration carried the language to its present location. It is related to the Semitic languages, such as Arabic. Hausa was first written, using Arabic script, around 1500 CE. This written language was used by religious leaders and political aristocracy, and a few works have survived, the most well known being The Kano Chronicle.

As mentioned above, it is one of the most widely spoken languages in Africa. If we exclude the use of colonial languages (such as English and French), Hausa and Swahili are the two most spoken languages in Sub-Saharan Africa. And, of the hundreds of languages spoken in West Africa, Hausa is the most spoken. Hausa also holds the status of the language of Islam in West Africa. Across West Africa, Hausa is recognized as being a language of Islam, and many Muslims in non-Hausa areas have some knowledge of the language.

Writing Systems

Hausa is written using two distinct writing systems, one based on the Latin alphabet, and the other based on the Arabic alphabet. The Latin based Boko system—the one used in this course—is the most commonly used by publishers and Hausa literacy classes. The Arabic based version is used mainly for the publication of Islamic religious pamphlets by small publishers in Northern Nigeria.

Modern written Hausa generally uses the boko Latin-based script, but this can come in several forms. The form used in this book is the standard for most Hausa publications today, and looks like this:

<<Ƴan-uwana suna da ɗaki a wani ƙauye>>

This form of written Hausa makes use of several hook letters to indicate the glottalized sounds that do not exist in English. Many publications, however, do not use these hooked letters. This is especially common on the internet. Instead they will use an apostrophe before the letter to indicate the glottalized form. See the example below.

’Yan-uwana suna da ‘daki a wani ‘kauye.

Many will even leave out the apostrophes, leaving it to the reader to determine by context whether the letter is glottalized. See the example in this form.

Yan-uwana suna da daki a wani kauye.

Even when the glottalized letters are indicated, however, there remains some information that is not included. The tone pattern and vowel length are not indicated. There is a form of proper Hausa that not only uses the hooked letters, but also includes tone and length markers. These markers consist of accents, or diacritics, placed over the vowels. Rarely would a whole book or article be written in this form, but it is generally used in dictionaries and often in Hausa learning textbooks to eliminate the guesswork with unfamiliar words. See a Hausa dictionary such as Nicolas Awde’s Hausa-English / English-Hausa Dictionary for a more complete explication of this system.

Literature and Media

Hausa has a relatively short history as a written language. Although the earliest written Hausa texts (in the Arabic-based, or Ajami, script) date back to about the year 1500 CE, these were limited to a few court records, letters, and religious materials. In subsequent centuries there was some use of written Hausa for poetry, representing the first true literary use of written Hausa, but this also remained limited. It was only with the arrival of the British colonialists to Northern Nigeria that there began to be a concerted effort to promote the use of written Hausa in a widespread manner. It was during the beginning phases of this effort that the administration decided to use the Latin-based script as the standard for written Hausa rather than the Arabic-base Ajami.

During the 20^th century the British colonial administration set up a publishing house for the purpose of publishing in Hausa. There was a concerted effort to seek out and support Hausa authors, and the result was the beginning of a Hausa literary movement. This literary movement continues today, and although the number of great works of literature remains limited, there have been a large number of small books published in Hausa. The number continues to grow. These books are generally published by small publishing houses in Northern Nigeria, and usually go out of print quickly, making them difficult to obtain outside of Hausaland. Hausa also has a growing web presence with web-based magazines and news sites.

But perhaps the most important Hausa language media comes in the form of short-wave radio broadcasts. The national radio stations of America, England, Germany, Iran, and China all broadcast news in Hausa to West Africa via shortwave. Nearly all men, and a large number of women, in Hausaland have access to a shortwave radio, and so this has become a window to the outside world for Hausas in the villages as well as in the cities.

Meanwhile more and more Hausa books are available in the market as more people become literate. Most of these are either simple love stories or religious instructions, but other genres are making some inroads. 

Tonality

Hausa is a tonal language, although not to the degree of some other African languages. In this course we will not use the tone and vowel length markers that are found in some dictionaries and language learning texts. The aspect of tonality is very important. It is worthwhile to mimic the intonation and speech rhythm of the native speaker in order to properly pronounce words and phrases. 

Alphabet

The Latin-based Hausa alphabet is very similar to the one used in English, with just a handful of exceptions and differences in pronunciation.

Consonants

Vowels

When the vowels are taught in Hausa, two diphthongs are included. The short i and the short u are often interchangeable.

Pronunciation

Pronunciation of written Hausa is actually fairly simple. The words generally follow the rules in a fairly uniform manner. The vowel length and tonal pattern have to be memorized since they are not normally written, but there are no confusing spelling rules to deal with. Overall, it can be said that Hausa has a nasal and rhythmic sound.

Word Patterns

Although Hausa words are generally not written with the tone and vowel length indicated, you will become increasingly able to guess the pronunciation even if the word is not familiar. This is because there are tone and vowel length patterns that accompany certain types of words in Hausa. From the prefix, suffix, root, or context of the word it is often possible to make an educated guess as to the proper pronunciation.  

Doubled Letters

There are some doubled letters, but this is done according to the sound of the word, not just as a spelling convention. A doubled consonant is pronounced with emphasis. You must almost stop on the consonant to give it its full emphasis. As in English it is important to differentiate between words with doubled letters and words without double letters. They will have different pronunciation and different meanings.

Doubling ts and sh

The consonants ts and sh are doubled by doubling the first letter. Thus, ts becomes tts and sh becomes ssh.

The letter f

The letter f is pronounced somewhat differently in Hausa than in English. It is pronounced by pronouncing the “fa” sound of English without placing your teeth on your lip. It ends up sounding more like “hwa.” Sometimes it is even written as “hw” rather than “f.” It is also common for the “h” to replace the “f” entirely in certain words. This is often a dialectical difference. Also note that some Hausas will pronounce the “f” more like a “p.” The letter “p” which does not exist in Hausa is usually pronounced as an “f” in Hausa when a loanword with a “p” is used in Hausa. The letter “p” is, however sometimes written when transcribing foreign words, and the majority of Hausa readers will recognize the letter as an equivalent of “f.”

The letter r

The “r” in Hausa can be either rolled or flapped. The rolled “r” is pronounced in such a way as to trill the tongue against the roof of the mouth. The flapped “r” is produced with a quick flap of the tongue against the roof of the mouth. A doubled “r” is pronounced as a long rolled “r.” For those familiar with Spanish, these will all be recognizable.

The terminal n

An “n” at the end of a Hausa word is usually pronounced with the nasal “ng” sound much like the sound created by the “ing” in English. Thus nan is pronounced “nang.”

The letters ƴ, ɗ, ƙ, and ɓ  

These letters have no English equivalent. Linguistically speaking, they are glottalized sounds pronounced implosively, or sometimes explosively. In more practical terms one should learn them by duplicating the pronunciation of a native Hausa speaker. It is important to distinguish them from their non-glottalized counterparts because they are

different letters and can thus change the meaning of the word. Thus, ƙafa (foot) is entirely different than kafa (to establish).

The letter Hamza

The hamza (‘) is ignored when listing words in alphabetical order. In terms of pronunciation it is simply a stop. Thus, the word a’a (no) is pronounced as two short “ah” sounds with clear break between them.