Hi everyone my name is Julie and today we're finally back to Africa
We're gonna explore the biggest language in West Africa - a region home to ancient empires and civilizations
Sannu, and welcome to the Hausa language
Hausa is one of the most important languages in Africa
but surprisingly it's not very well known outside the continent
It is difficult to say how many Hausa speakers are there because estimates vary greatly from source to source
I saw numbers ranging from 40 to 150 million, both first and second language speakers
Hausa is an official language in Nigeria and Niger
and it's also spoken in numerous countries around the West African region
The main Hausa speaking population is concentrated in the northern states of Nigeria and southern Niger
where Hausa is the main language of communication
But it is also an important language of international communication and trade well beyond the Hausa states
It is actually the second most spoken African language after Swahili, that is if we don't consider Arabic
Actually, we should mention Arabic when talking about Hausa. First of all, because Hausa people are Muslim
They were under a strong Islamic and Arabic influence since the 15th century
so naturally, their language has a lot of Arabic loanwords
But what is even more interesting, Hausa and Arabic are actually related. They belong to the same Afroasiatic family
It is a massive family stretching all the way from Arabian peninsula to the Atlantic ocean
and counting more than 370 million speakers
It includes incredibly diverse languages: Hebrew, Amharic, Somali, Ancient Egyptian, Maltese, Berber languages
and of course Arabic and Hausa and many many others
We don't know exactly when and where Afroasiatic originated
It seems that around 10 000 years ago it already started breaking down into smaller sub-families
That's a very long time ago but we still find common cognates among Afroasiatic languages
especially among pronouns, words that refer to body parts, family members and other basic vocabulary
Researchers propose various Afroasiatic homelands: Middle East or somewhere along the Nile
or the Sahara which by the way used to be a lush green region at the time
It is also not clear which branches started to break out first and how they are interrelated among each other
Hausa belongs to the Chadic branch spoken east, south and west of lake Chad, hence the name
and Hausa is by far its biggest representative
Chadic is the biggest branch of the Afroasiatic family in terms of language number
It comprises some 140-160 languages
and that could indicate that maybe Chadic was the first to break out from the Afroasiatic trunk
Interestingly, when we look at genetics we see a Y-haplogroup R1b, which is mostly prevalent in Western Europe
being frequent among Chadic people and peaking among the Hausa
Of course, it is very unlikely that some settlers came from Ireland or something
and spread their DNA in the middle of Africa thousands of years ago
but this might show some connection to North Africa and Middle East
Overall genetically Hausa are the closest to the Nilo-Saharan people who also live around the same area of the continent
so possibly when Afroasiatic speakers arrived from somewhere, we don't know from where yet
some of these locals mixed with them and adopted their language and that's how Chadic languages and people appeared
And Hausa actually has a legend which talks about kind of the same thing but a little bit different
actually very different and about much later times
It's about the prince from Baghdad, Bayajidda, who arrived to the Hausa lands which were ruled by queens at those times
and married the queen of Daura - one of the Hausa city-states
Their seven sons then each ruled the seven city-states that made up Hausaland
These events and the rise of Hausa states occurred around 500-700 AD
and this is when Hausa people start their history from
The Hausa states then rose and maintained dominance in the region thanks to the highly profitable Trans-Saharan trade
through which Hausa got not only the goods but also Islam
This is also a period when a high number of Arabic loanwords flooded Hausa
especially words relating to religion, law and trade, as well as numbers 20 and above
In the 19th century Hausaland was conquered by the nomadic Fulani who came all the way from the western shores of Africa
and established the Sokoto caliphate which in 1903 was brought down by the British
The Fulani have since integrated into the Hausa culture and more than half of them speak Hausa as their first language
In the Nigerian part of Hausaland English has been the major source of loanwords since the beginning of the 20th century
and it still continues to be this way
The words of English origin are transformed to correspond to Hausa phonology so sometimes it is hard to recognize them
There are two writing systems for Hausa: ajami based on Arabic script and used since around 17th century
and boko based on the Latin alphabet and used since the beginning of the 20th century
Boko also refers to secular or non-Islamic, and there was a view for a long time that
this word comes from English "book". But it is more likely that it came from the native word meaning
"shame" or "fraud" as in being deceitful in comparison to quranic scholarship
Nevertheless, boko is the main writing system for Hausa, while ajami is used in Islamic schools and sometimes for poetry
Looking at the alphabet we quickly notice these hooked letters
These are the implosive and ejective consonants pronounced by obstructing the vocal tract
so you don't let the air out, like in "babewa" or "kafa"
There is also this letter which according to terminology is called "palatal approximant with creaky voice"
It is better that we actually hear a native speaker pronounce it because I really struggled with this one
There are five rather straightforward vowel sounds but these could be long or short and
that is not shown in the writing so good luck
What's more important Hausa is a tonal language and the tones are also not shown in writing so really good luck
In fact most of the languages in West Africa are tonal so Hausa doesn't really stand out there
But it's an Afroasiatic language, and some researchers actually think that Proto-afroasiatic was also tonal
and that it lost its tones in for example Semitic, but kept them in Chadic languages
Hausa has three tones: high, low, and falling. High and low tones can happen on both short and long vowels
but the falling only occurs on the long because historically it's a merge between high and low tones
Tones are important. Vowel lengths are important too as they can completely change the meaning
like in "gora", bamboo, versus "gora", large gourd
Well of course it's better to listen to the native speakers to hear the proper Hausa pronunciation
Let's talk about the grammar. Hausa has two genders: masculine and feminine which is
very typical for an Afroasiatic language
and plural where the gender is not distinguished
And this is about all the straightforward and easy things that there are in Hausa grammar
Yes, plural doesn't have gender, but to form a plural is a separate story. There are uncountable ways to do it. Literally uncountable
because different researchers propose different pattern groupings so some end up with 10, some end up with 20
some end up with 40. Yes, 40 different ways to form a plural
Hausa is an SVO language and the subject part here is particularly important
You see when conjugating a verb the tense, gender and number information is indicated in the pronoun and not in the verb
so the pronoun can never be dropped even when it is redundant, like in this sentence "I" is repeated
Notice by the way how there's no word "and" to connect the two verbs
You can see here how with tense and aspect change the pronoun changes too but the verb stays the same
There is a multitude of ways to manipulate pronouns to express different nuances
Even negation which are particles "ba and ba" placed around the pronoun and verb sometimes can attach to the pronoun
So it's a quite complicated system. And if you think that at least the verb does not change form then I'm sorry to disappoint you
The verb changes form depending on whether it is followed by a direct object, an indirect object
or nothing at all or followed by something else
And of course, there are different tone and vowel patterns that direct how exactly this change happens
Hausa verbs have been divided into eight grades based on these patterns
and still there are some verbs that don't fit in any of them
So there you have it - a language with a mysterious history, a very complex structure
influential present and hopefully a bright future
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Thank you so much for watching and see you in our next exploration