Hausa is the only one of the languages of the Chadic family (there are more than 140 in total) that has a written language, and the largest in terms of the number of speakers. The total number of speakers is over 60 million. It is native to the Hausa tribe, who live mainly in Nigeria and Niger. But it is also spoken in countries such as Chad, Cameroon, Benin, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Togo, Sudan and others. In Nigeria, Niger and Ghana, Hausa has officially recognized status as one of the national minority dialects.
Place in the international classification
The Hausa language belongs to the Western Chadian group, which is part of the Afro-Asiatic (formerly called the Semitic-Hamitic) macrofamily. Some researchers separate the Hausa group, which includes two languages: Gwandara and Hausa.
There are more than ten dialects within this dialect. They are divided into two large groups: eastern and northwestern.
Nigerian standard house is based on the Kano Koine. The Nigerian city of Kano is a major commercial and cultural center. Koine is a variant of the spoken language that occurs when communicatingbetween speakers of different dialects.
Interesting facts
The modern Hausa script used in media and education is called boko and is based on the Latin alphabet. It was developed in the 19th century during British colonization.
Remarkable fact: the word "boko" in Hausa can mean not only a writing system, but also a Western-style education. The traditional interpretation of etymology: from the English book - "book". But in 2013, the American specialist in African languages Paul Newman (Paul Newman) in his publication on the etymology of Boko (The Ethymology of Hausa Boko) proved that the word is not a borrowing, and its original meaning is "fake, fraud", more broadly - "any non-Islamic texts".
There is a slight difference in the use of the Latin alphabet in Niger and Nigeria. They use the letter ƴ and 'y respectively to represent the same sound.
In parallel with the Latin alphabet, there is a writing system based on the Arabic alphabet - ajam, or ajami. There are no uniform rules for it. The earliest examples of the use of ajami for the Hausa language date back to the 17th century - these are examples of religious Islamic poetry. And today, the main field of application of this writing system is literature related to Islam.
And one more interesting fact. In addition, in Nigeria, another writing technique has been developed for Hausa - Braille.
Phoneticsystem
According to data provided by the University of California, Los Angeles, there are 23 or 25 consonant sounds in Hausa, depending on the speaker.
There are only fourteen vowels. Of these, there are five main ones that differ in length (short and long), and four diphthongs.
Besides, Hausa is a tone language. There are only three tones: high, low and falling. They are not indicated on the letter, although exceptions can be found in didactic literature.
There are also three types of syllables:
- consonant + vowel;
- consonant + vowel + vowel;
- consonant + vowel + consonant.
There are no consonant clusters (combinations of several consonants in a row).
A few words about grammar and morphology
The word order in a Hausian sentence is SVO (Subject-Verb-Object).
Nouns have categories of gender (feminine and masculine) and number (singular and plural).
Adjectives agree with nouns in gender or number, can be placed both before and after it. However, they are rarely used - the qualities of an object are usually expressed using nouns.
For verbs there is a category of aspect (perfect and imperfect), but no tense. The period to which the statement refers is transmitted using special service words or the general context of the statement. The main ways of word formation are prefix and suffix.
Use in popular culture
Hausa in Nigeriapublished a number of printed materials. According to the Nigerian site massmediang.com, for 2018 in the northern regions of Nigeria, this language is the most popular in the media. It also hosts a number of television shows and broadcasts from the BBC. The Hausa Wikipedia section contains over three thousand articles.
On YouTube there is a channel with films on Hausa - Hausa movies TV, it has more than 60 thousand subscribers. Mostly they are native speakers of the Hausa language. English sub titles are available for some videos - many people in the country know English..
