Talk:Hausa language

Speaker Population

Are there 35 or 70 million first language speakers of Hausa? Stevenbird (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 09:53, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Yoruba?

Dear all, I have a new friend who was born in Ode Omu then lived in Lagos.He is in England on his own waiting for his wife and children to come over in April.The question that I would like to ask is what is his home language as I would like to write him a few messages and learn a few frazes to make him feel welcome and show him that I care.Please let me know.Colin

Odeomu is in Osun State, which is largely Yoruba; Lagos, too is largely Yoruba. So your best guess is that he speaks the Yoruba language. When it comes to finding Yoruba phrases, you could try Google or you could look for a book on West African languages. Note, however, that Nigeria has over 500 languages, and that while Yoruba is your most likely bet, I am in no way certain of my answer. In the future, you're more likely to get quick answers at the Reference desk/Language. Picaroon 22:46, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I am Pastor  J Ademola Odewale. I was born in Odeomu but now live in USA. You did not tell us where you are.You can as well ask your friend what language(s) he speaks. However, people from Odeomu are Yorubas and we speak the Yoruba language. About 30% of Nigerians speak Yoruba language.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.11.150.42 (talk) 07:29, 25 February 2010 (UTC) 

Alphabet on BBC

Hi,

BBC Hausa is written in plain Latin alphabet with no special African characters.

Can someone please elaborate on that?

Thanks in advance. --Amir E. Aharoni 09:25, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Niger Scouting

Can someone render "Be Prepared", the Scout Motto, into the Hausa language and the Zarma language? Thanks! Chris 05:27, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Good day,

my name is Hassan Dangambo, Hausa man from kano state of nigeria. Tte word

"Be Prepared" in Hausa language is " A zama cikin shiri " 21:19, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Diphthongs

The article says: "Diphthongs are: /ai/, /au/, /iu/ and /ui/." But it fails to explain which are the semivowels in /iu/ and /ui/. Since the first two examples are falling diphthongs, i am tempted to guess the others are too (that is, /iw/ and /uj/, altho i'm not sure whether in IPA you can use /j/ and /w/ after vowels or only before them). 200.96.95.178 (talk) 20:40, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Transliteration

Could you discuss the effects of transliteration from English into Hausa more fully? For example, let's say a Nigerian woman wanted to name her child Gregory. What would be the Hausa equivalent of that? -Agur bar Jacé (talk) 02:05, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Mistake

Hausa was classified as a Semitic laguage by a German, who had mistaken obvious borrowings from Arabic for Hausa words. This mistake began the tradition of including Hausa in the Hamito-Semitc group. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.30.71.244 (talk) 12:55, 28 May 2010 (UTC) This was in the mid-19th century. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.30.71.244 (talk) 13:20, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

It's actually not an error to say that Hausa is Hamito-Semitic. Hamito-Semitic is an obsolete name for what is now usually called Afroasiatic in English, a vast group of languages whose branches include Semitic, Ancient Egyptian, Berber, Cushitic and Chadic, of which last Hausa is by far the most widely spoken. It's true that Hausa isn't Semitic, though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.185.127.121 (talk) 01:17, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Ghanaian Hausa

Can you please clarify whether this is mutually intelligible with the standard, or just those few minor phonological differences? —Wiki Wikardo 04:10, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes it is. I used to live in Northern Ghana, and had colleagues who spoke Gaananci. They managed to communicate with Hausa-speakers from all over. Given the large area it's used over, and the fact that many users are using it as a trade language rather than as their mother tongue, dialect differences in Hausa are remarkably small. Pretty much any Hausa speaker can understand any other. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.185.127.121 (talk) 01:13, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Although it isn't just "minor phonetic differences." There are grammatical differences too, like loss of grammatical gender. Mind you , there are native-language Hausa dialects which lack grammatical gender too, though not the Kano form which is usually regarded as standard. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.185.127.121 (talk) 01:22, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Grammar and vocabulary

There seems to be very little or no information on grammar and vocabulary. Since I came here looking for that information, I can't currently solve that problem, but isn't it a rather major omission? What should I do when I come across such a major omission which I can't remedy?

Nineteenthly (talk) 07:38, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

https://www.academia.edu/1284733/Hausa_Grammatical_Sketch

is a nice, if brief, account of a somewhat non-standard dialect. I agree, the Wikipedia article is pretty thin for what is probably the most widely used indigenous language of Africa (if you don't count Arabic.)

Spread not true!

the following is not true, you cannot use Hausa in Dakar and Accra..

"The language is used as a lingua franca (similar to Swahili in East Africa) in a much larger swathe of West Africa (Accra, Abidjan, Dakar, Lomé, Cotonou, Bamako, Conakry, Ouagadougou, etc.)"

Yes, there are Hausa traders in those cities, so you can actually use it a fair amount, but that's like saying Yiddish was a lingua franca of pre-WWII Europe. — kwami (talk) 00:21, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Palatals or palatalized velars?

Up to 7 April 2010, the phonology section stated that Hausa has palatalized, plain and labialized velar plosives, e.g. [kʲ k kʷ]. Then, User:Alpinu replaced most (though not all) the occurrences of symbols of palatalized velars by those of actual palatals, e.g. [kʲ] by [c], without no comment beyond "just include IPA symbols /c/ and /ɟ/"; and later (I can't find it now), someone replaced the term "palatalized velars" by palatals (with no comment). Contrary to what many people seem to believe, palatals – audio files – and palatalized velars are not the same thing! Palatals sound more similar to palatalized coronals (e.g. [tʲ]) than to palatalized velars – sound files of [tʲ], [dʲ] and [kʲ] are here.

I don't know if this was a change for the better, because I don't know what Hausa really sounds like. Does anyone have the cited sources? Does this feature differ between dialects (I wouldn't at all be surprised if this turned out to be the case)?

If nobody comments on this in the next month or so, I'll try to find recordings (BBC broadcasts in Hausa, right?) and simply change the article – or not – according to my own impression, but of course a more citable source would be preferable.

David Marjanović (talk) 23:21, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Ƴ ƴ

According to both the transcription here and my impression of the linked sound file, ƴ isn't a palatalized glottal stop [ʔʲ], but a creaky-voiced palatal approximant [j̰]. I will therefore change the article in about a minute.

However, it's easily possible that this actually varies among dialects. If you have a reference or sound file that attests [ʔʲ], please say so!

David Marjanović (talk) 23:26, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

The palatalized glottal stop [ʔʲ] for ƴ in Niger orthography or ʼy in Nigeria orthography probably comes from reading of ʼ + y. Newman 2000, page 3, describes ʼy as “laryngealized semivowel”. So “creaky-voiced palatal approximant” is correct. --Moyogo/ (talk) 18:02, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

David Marjanović: Do you hear the same in http://aflang.humnet.ucla.edu/Hausa/Pronunciation/consonants.html#anchor112931 in the audio for ʼyāʼyā? That page describes it as a glottalized y or glottal stop combined with y. So maybe both are valid? After all creaky voice is a type of glottalization. --Moyogo/ (talk) 18:19, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

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Number of speakers

Why do the estimates of native speakers, all cited from different pages of the same source (Ethnologue) vary so widely? Also, Ethnologue is subscription-only - they want to charge some $400 a year for access; can we not find a reliable (and more definite) source which can be verified by everyone, instead of just academics with an institution pass? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 12:57, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

CIA factbook can be used as a source to native speakers by country.

Engr Muhammad Khamis (talk) 10:54, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

It could be, if it had the relevant stats. All I can find is a list of languages spoken in Nigeria, no speaker numbers or even percentage of the population.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 16:42, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

In the ethnic groups section it stated that 30% were Hausa, this mean 64 million were native Hausa speakers in Nigeria Engr Muhammad Khamis (talk) 11:26, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Sorry if this seems contrarian, but what you're arguing relies on 100% of ethnic Hausas being native speakers of the language and 0% of people of other ethnicities being native speakers of the language, both of which seem doubtful.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 15:16, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

List of Afroasiatic languages

I strongly suggest the long list of Afroasiatic languages in the Classification paragraph be removed. These languages are not of immediate interest in the current context, and they are (or should be) easily found by following the links for the West Chadic, the Chadic and the Afroasiatic languages.Redav (talk) 15:43, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

• Today I have removed the list mentioned in the remark.Redav (talk) 23:52, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

potassium

potassium:• A Hausance yana nufin (Kanwa) Kanwa wani sinadari ne da ake amfani dashi musamman magani ciyon ciki, a takaice dai da kace kanwa a kasar Hausa, to kusan kowa yasan me kake nufi da wannan kalma. Calcium shine Kanwa. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Salihu Aliyu (talk • contribs) 18:40, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

NON-AFROASIATIC INFLUENCES

Hello Greenwhitedino Your edits of 11th October, 2019 in the Hausa Language article refers:

First I would like to call your attention to the fact that your heading for the section is misplaced compared to the reference you cited, which was discussing Hausa as an aberrant form of Chadic Language. Your Title should have read; NON-CHADIC INFLUENCES. So is your use of the word "Middle Belt" because the official term for the geographical area in question is "North Central".

2. The title of the reference paper was very clear in that it is only a hypothesis/proposal for such etymologies and not for citation. It did not categorically state that the aberrant words are loans from "Adamawa, Plateau(please note that the word "Plateau" is English and recent with no historical relevance), Kainji, Nupoid, and other Benue-Congo languages". If you carefully study the etymological tables and the commentaries you will discover that the paper is only making proposals and inviting commentaries, that is to say, it is work in progress.

3.Please note that I discovered mistakes or even lack of Knowledge on the part of the writer about certain aspects of Hausa Language relationship with the Niger-Congo languages he was referring to, notably, not knowing that the word Gwaggo/Goggo is actually Fulani word or that the the term Gwari is actually Gbyi and not Gbari as he assumed. He also did not know that Gwandara people are directly descended from the Hausa of Kano, as attested to in their oral tradition or that Gwari/Gbayi people have been part of Hausa history(please read up on the Bayajidda legend), and Hausa's closest Savannah neighbors to the south.

In conclusion, I would like to point out that all of the individual Niger-Congo languages or tribes he claimed to be "probable" source for the "aberrant" Hausa words have historically been very small in population with no known organized settlements/villages/towns cities in their history as to make any prolonged or meaningful social contact with the Hausa language, much less sources for the aberrant words. So the probability of borrowing should definitely be the reverse.Qosau (talk) 12:28, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

/e/ and /eː/ characters

As I just mentioned on Talk:Ajami script to 3omarz, am I right in thinking (via Graphemica) that /e/ is U+065C ◌ٜ ARABIC VOWEL SIGN DOT BELOW and /eː/ is U+065C plus U+0670 ◌ٰ ARABIC LETTER SUPERSCRIPT ALEF (so ◌ٰٜ). That means the forms in the table are shown with tāʼ as تٜ and تٰٜ, right?

If that's the case, shouldn't we replace the tāʼ forms with tatweel forms like  ـٜ  and  ـٰٜ , to match the other vowels? — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk; please {{ping}} me in replies) 19:16, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Hausa

How to write promiss, subject,colour and police with money — Preceding unsigned comment added by 102.88.34.216 (talk) 07:57, 4 February 2023 (UTC)