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Hausa linguistic data
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Common questions about Hausa
What linguistic data does this Hausa page show?
Word order, tone system, gender count, case marking, adposition direction, syllable structure, consonant inventory traits (implosives ɓ ɗ ƙ), vowel system, morphological alignment, script, register stratification, speaker count, and geographic area. Each row is one feature with Hausa's value visible; you can add other languages to read the same feature side by side.
Where do the Hausa data points come from?
Typological features are merged from URIEL+ (Mortensen et al.) and a curated set authored against descriptive grammars. Speaker counts come from Ethnologue and Glottolog. Geographic area is computed from the Asher 2007 world language atlas. Similarity scores combine genetic distance, typological overlap, and lexical-borrowing data.
How do Hausa tones work?
Hausa has three lexical tones — high, low, and falling — assigned per syllable. Tone distinguishes minimal pairs (sun with high tone means 'they did' versus a low-tone variant meaning 'sleep') and signals grammatical contrasts (perfective vs subjunctive). Tone is not normally marked in everyday Latin orthography; readers infer it from context and stem identity.
What's the difference between Boko and Ajami scripts?
Boko (the Latin-based script standardized in the 1930s) is the official orthography for Hausa in Nigeria and Niger, used in education, government, and modern publishing. Ajami (Arabic-derived script) was the older writing tradition, used for Islamic scholarship, poetry, and correspondence; it's still active in religious and traditional contexts. Many Hausa speakers know both.
Why does Hausa cluster with other Chadic languages on similarity scores?
Hausa is the largest Chadic language by far, but the family includes ~150 others spoken across Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. They share Afro-Asiatic genetic ancestry, two-gender systems, tone, and core morphology — though most are mutually unintelligible with Hausa due to long divergence. The factor breakdown chip on the row tells you which dimensions contributed most.
Sources for Hausa
The grammatical descriptions on this page are informed by the following published reference and descriptive grammars. Grammatical facts themselves are not subject to copyright; the scholars who documented them deserve attribution.
- Jaggar, Philip J. (2001). Hausa. London Oriental and African Language Library 7. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins (788 pp.). — Comprehensive descriptive grammar; chapters consulted include 1 (overview), 2 (phonology), 3 (noun classification), 4 (gender/number), 6 (TAM, pp. 148–208), 7 (verb grades, pp. 212–217), 8 (verbal nouns), 9 (NP syntax / numerals), 11 (clause syntax), 12 (focus / questions), 15 (adverbials/prepositions). [via static/grammar-library/hau/jaggar-2001-hausa.pdf]