Haoussa

The haoussa (also called hausawa , raised , abakwariga , mgbakpa , habe , kado ) is one of the principal commercial languages of West Africa; she is spoken by approximately 50 million people.

History

The first made up poems in haoussa, written in Arabic alphabet adapted to the notation of the African languages (ajami) , date from the beginning of the XIXe century. At that time also a tradition of chronicles versified in haoussa occurs (also noted in ajami). To this tradition was added in the Thirties, following British colonization, a literary production in Latin alphabet in a subset of the Alphabet side-Nigerian (plays, tales, news, novels, poetry)

Classification

The haoussa belongs to the Afro-Asian Langues.

Geographical distribution

The haoussa is mainly spoken with the Nigeria (30 million speakers), with the Niger (5 million) like with the Ghana, with the Cameroun, the Chad and the Sudan. He is also spoken in many commercial big cities.

Official statute

The haoussa is an official language in north Nigeria, a national language with the Niger.

Dialects

Kano, Katagum, Hadejiya, Sokoto, Gobirawa, Adarawa, Kebbawa, Zamfarawa, Katsina, Arewa. The haoussa presents a weak dialectal differentiation (the Intercompréhension is complete on the whole of the linguistic surface).

Writing

The written language is founded on the dialect of Kano. Haoussa has been written for more than 200 years, first of all in the Arabic alphabet, then mainly in the Latin alphabet which was introduced at the beginning of the 20th century, with 4 additional consonants: (also noted), and the Stop glottal.

The writing in Latin characters also uses Diacritique S to indicate the tons: grave accents (your bottom), acute (your top) and circumflexe (your descendant), as well as the Macron to indicate the long vowels. If these diacritic is generally noted in the dictionaries, they are not it in the other printed texts: books and newspapers.