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Hausa is a Chadic language that is spoken by the Hausa people in the northern parts of Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Benin and Togo, and the southern parts of Niger, and Chad, with significant minorities in Ivory Coast. A small number of speakers also exist in Sudan.
Hausa–Fulani are people of mixed Hausa and Fulani origin. They are primarily found in the Northern region of Nigeria, most of whom speak a variant of Hausa or Fula or both as their first language. The term Hausa-Fulani is also used mostly as a joint term to refer to both the monoethnic Hausa and Fulani ethnic populations in Northern Nigeria.
Fula, also known as Fulani or Fulah, is a Senegambian language spoken by around 36.8 million people as a set of various dialects in a continuum that stretches across some 18 countries in West and Central Africa. Along with other related languages such as Serer and Wolof, it belongs to the Atlantic geographic group within Niger–Congo, and more specifically to the Senegambian branch. Unlike most Niger-Congo languages, Fula does not have tones.
Pulaar is a Fula language spoken primarily as a first language by the Fula and Toucouleur peoples in the Senegal River valley area traditionally known as Futa Tooro and further south and east. Pulaar speakers, known as Haalpulaar'en live in Senegal, Mauritania, the Gambia, and western Mali. The two main speakers of Pulaar are the Toucouleur people and the Fulɓe. Pulaar is the second most spoken local language in Senegal, being a first language for around 22% of the population. This correlates with 23.7% of the country in which Pulaar is the population's ethnicity. Pulaar is one of the national languages of Senegal alongside 13 others. It was admitted as an official language of Senegal by Presidential decree in 1971. There are around 28 known dialects of Pulaar, most of which are mutually intelligible with each other. The Pulaar dialects, as well as other West African languages, are usually referenced under the umbrella term ‘Fula’. Pulaar as a language, however, is not usually referenced as ‘Fula’.
Fulani may refer to:
Air Tamajeq (Tayərt) is a variety of Tuareg. It is spoken by the Tuareg people inhabiting the Aïr Mountains of the Agadez Region in Niger.
Serer, often broken into differing regional dialects such as Serer-Sine and Serer saloum, is a language of the Senegambian branch of the Niger–Congo family spoken by 1.2 million people in Senegal and 30,000 in the Gambia as of 2009. It is the principal language of the Serer people, and was the language of the early modern kingdoms of Sine, Saloum, and Baol.
Pular (𞤆𞤵𞤤𞤢𞤪) is a Fula language spoken primarily by the Fula people of Fouta Djallon, Guinea. It is also spoken in parts of Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, and Senegal. There are a small number of speakers in Mali. Pular is spoken by 4.3 million Guineans, about 55% of the national population. This makes Pular the most widely spoken indigenous language in the country. Substantial numbers of Pular speakers have migrated to other countries in West Africa, notably Senegal.
Ajami or Ajamiyya, which comes from the Arabic root for 'foreign' or 'stranger', is an Arabic-derived script used for writing African languages, particularly Songhai, Mandé, Hausa and Swahili, although many other languages are also written using the script, including Mooré, Pulaar, Wolof, and Yoruba. It is an adaptation of the Arabic script to write sounds not found in Standard Arabic. Rather than adding new letters, modifications usually consist of additional dots or lines added to pre-existing letters.
Wolofal is a derivation of the Arabic script for writing the Wolof language. It is basically the name of a West African Ajami script as used for that language.
The Hausa are a native ethnic group in West Africa. They speak the Hausa language, which is the second most spoken language after Arabic in the Afro-Asiatic language family. The Hausa are a culturally homogeneous people based primarily in the Sahelian and the sparse savanna areas of southern Niger and northern Nigeria respectively, numbering around 86 million people, with significant populations in Benin, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Chad, Central African Republic, Togo, Ghana, as well as smaller populations in Sudan, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Senegal, Gambia. Predominantly Hausa-speaking communities are scattered throughout West Africa and on the traditional Hajj route north and east traversing the Sahara, with an especially large population in and around the town of Agadez. Other Hausa have also moved to large coastal cities in the region such as Lagos, Port Harcourt, Accra, Abidjan, Banjul and Cotonou as well as to parts of North Africa such as Libya over the course of the last 500 years. The Hausa traditionally live in small villages as well as in precolonial towns and cities where they grow crops, raise livestock including cattle as well as engage in trade, both local and long distance across Africa. They speak the Hausa language, an Afro-Asiatic language of the Chadic group. The Hausa aristocracy had historically developed an equestrian based culture. Still a status symbol of the traditional nobility in Hausa society, the horse still features in the Eid day celebrations, known as Ranar Sallah. Daura is the cultural center of the Hausa people. The town predates all the other major Hausa towns in tradition and culture.
The Fula language is written primarily in the Latin script, but in some areas is still written in an older Arabic script called the Ajami script or in the recently invented Adlam script.
Tawellemmet (Tawəlləmmət) is the largest of the Tuareg languages in the Berber branch of the Afroasiatic family. It is usually one of two languages classed within a language called Tamajaq, the other language being Aïr Tamajeq. Tawellemmet is the language of the Iwellemmeden Tuareg. It is spoken in Mali, Niger and parts of northern Nigeria by approximately 1.3 million people with the largest number of speakers in Niger at 829,000 people.
David Whitehorn Arnott was a British linguist who was Professor of West African Languages at School of Oriental and African Studies. He is known for his works on Fulani and Tiv.
Adamawa Fulfulde is a variety of the Fula language. It is spoken mainly in Cameroon but also by significant communities residing in Nigeria, Chad, and Sudan by Fulani pastoralists across the Sahel. It is also known as Eastern Fulfulde and by various other names including Boulbe, Dzemay, Fula, Fulfulde, Mbororo, Palata, Peul etc.
Western Niger Fulfulde, also known as Gorgal Niiser Fulfulde is a variety of the Fula language, spoken mainly in Niger, and Burkina Faso, as well as by a small number of speakers in Benin by 3 million people. It has SOV word order and is closely related to other varieties of Fula spoken in Niger.
Borgu Fulfulde, also known as Borgu Fulani, Benin-Togo Fulfulde, Fulbe-Borgu, or Peul is a variety of the Fula language a West Atlantic language part of the Niger-Congo language family, it is spoken primarily in the Borgou Department of Benin, spanning Nigeria, other parts of Benin, as well as Togo and parts of Burkina Faso.
Central-Eastern Niger Fulfulde, also known as Lettugal Niiser Fulfulde is a variety of the Fula language, a Niger–Congo language predominantly spoken in the Central and Eastern regions of Niger, particularly among the Fulani people. The linguistic structure of this language exhibits distinct features, including a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) word order. Prepositions and postpositions are utilized in the language to convey spatial relationships. Genitives, articles, adjectives, numerals, and relatives follow noun heads, contributing to the overall complexity of sentence structures. The language employs a question-word-final pattern, placing question words at the end of interrogative sentences. Additionally, there is a specific set of affixes, comprising one prefix and nine suffixes, which play a crucial role in marking number and subject in verbs.
Hausa Ajami script refers to the practice of using the alphabet derived from Arabic script for writing of Hausa language.
Anjẹmi or Yoruba Ajami refers to the tradition and practice of writing the Yoruba language using the Arabic script, as part of the tradition among Muslims of West Africa at large, referred to as the Ajami script. These include the orthography of various Fula dialects, Hausa, Wolof, and more.
References
- 1 2 3 4 Nigerian Fulfulde at Ethnologue (26th ed., 2023)
- 1 2 3 4 Arnott, D. W. (December 10, 1970). The Nominal and Verbal Systems of Fula. Clarendon Press.
- 1 2 3 4 Dryer, Matthew; Haspelmath, Martin (2022). "The World Atlas of Language Structures Online". Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. doi:10.5281/zenodo.7385533.
- 1 2 3 4 "The use of proper nouns as an index of group identity in Fulfulde personal narratives". SIL International. January 24, 2013.
- ↑ http://www.rogerblench.info/Pastoralism/PastAf/Nigeria/FulBe%20identity%201990.pdf
- ↑ Uba Adamu, Aballa. (2023, September) The Gutenberg Principle: Hausa Digital Alàr̃ammà and Ajamīzation of Knowledge. Bayero University Kano, Nigeria. Published for Conference on Arabic in Africa: Historical and Sociolinguistic perspectives, University of Bayreuth, Germany.
- ↑ Dobronravine, Nikolai; Philips, John E. (2004). "Hausa Ajami Literature and Script: Colonial Innovations and Post-Colonial Myths in Northern Nigeria". Sudanic Africa. 15: 85–110. JSTOR 25653414.
- 1 2 Warren-Rothlin, Andy. 2012. Arabic script in modern Nigeria . In Roger M. Blench and Stuart McGill (eds.), Advances in minority language research in Nigeria, Vol. I. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe, 105-121. Rüdiger Köppe. (PDF Access)
- ↑ اَلْکَوَلْ کٜسَلْ ندٜرْ فُلْفُلْدٜ شَکَ نَاجٜىٰرِيَ (Alkawal Kesal Nder Fulfulde Caka Naajeeriya) (2011)https://www.bible.com/versions/2377-FUV-
- ↑ Bible.com. Nigerian Fulfulde [FUV], Parallel, Ajami and Latin. Acts Chapter 9. https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/2377/ACT.9.FUV?parallel=1159
