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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 is a West Chadic language.
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Hausa has had a written form for more than 200 years, at first with an Arabic script, but this has largely been superseded by a Latin alphabet which was introduced at the beginning of the 20th century.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
External links
Wikipedia articles written in this language are located at the
Hausa language Wikipedia
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