Hausa is the Chadic language with the largest number of speakers, spoken as a first language by about 24 million people, and as a second language by about 15 million more.

Classification

Hausa belongs to the West Chadic languages subgroup of the Chadic languages group, which in turn is part of the Afro-Asiatic language family.

Geographic distribution

Native speakers of Hausa are mostly to be found in the African country of Niger and in the north of Nigeria, but the language is widely used as a lingua franca(similar to Wolof in Senegal) in a much larger swathe of West Africa, particularly amongst Muslims.

Official status

Hausa is an official language in the north of Nigeria.

Dialects

Eastern Hausa dialects include Kano, Katagum and Hadejiya . Western Hausa dialects include Sokoto, Katsina, Gobirawa , Adarawa , Kebbawa and Zamfarawa . Northern Hausa dialects include Arewa and Arawa .

Derived languages

Barikanchi is a pidgin used in the military.

Sounds

Tones

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 the French 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 general writing tone is often not marked. However it is needed for disambiguation in some cases.

Writing system

Hausa has had a written form for more than 200 years, at first with an Arabic script, but this has largely been superseded by a Latin alphabet which was introduced at the beginning of the 20th century. There are three additional consonants which are added to the Roman alphabet: ɓ, ɗ and ƙ.

See also

• Kanem-Bornu Empire
• Learn Hausa

External links

• Ethnologue report on Hausa
• Hausa at UCLA
• Kofar Hausa dictionary at University of Vienna