Hausa is spoken as
a first language by as many as 50 million Africans. Hausa is also
a lingua franca in many West African countries. Hausa are concentrated
primarily in Northern Nigeria (perhaps 40 million) and Niger.
There are also well-established populations in Ghana and Cameroon.
Throughout the areas
where Hausa is spoken, it is remarkably uniform in pronunciation,
vocabulary, and structure. Indeed, the varieties of Hausa are
at least as mutually comprehensible as the varieties of English.
Based on examples of linguistic variation and uniformity available
from other parts of Africa and the world.
Hausa is one of the
most extensively researched of all sub-Saharan languages, and
has
a long tradition of song and poetry within a cosmopolitan Islamic
culture that arose
largely from the position of the old Hausa states astride the
trans-Saharan and savanna
trade routes. As a lingua franca in areas of West Africa, the
language has grown and
adapted to different social environments. Broadcasting in Hausa
from the BBC
World Service, Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, Radio Moscow
and Radio Peking,
hausa language is constantly adapting to meet the communicative
needs of modern
current affairs, science and business.