Neologisms in Hausa: A Sociological Approach

Opening ParagraphHausa is probably the most widely spoken language in Negro Africa. Besides being generally spoken throughout Northern Nigeria, its motherland, Hausa is, as Westermann and Bryan note, widely understood in other West African countries. They cite colonies of Hausa-speakers in Dahomey, Togo, Ghana, Cameroons, Chad, and ‘many of the greater centres in North Africa’. They could also usefully have mentioned the Sudan, where pilgrims from Northern Nigeria have settled in their tens of thousands. Indeed, it is often said that you will find Hausa-speakers from Dakar to Port Sudan, from Leopoldville to Fez. The explorer Heinrich Barth in the 1840's had his first Hausa lesson in Tunis, and fifty years later it was to Tripoli that Bishop Tugwell of the Church Missionary Society and his pioneer team of five went to study Hausa before undertaking their bold missionary thrust into the emirates. Westermann and Bryan point out that the total number of Hausa-speakers cannot be estimated in view of the enormous distribution of the Hausa and the great number of those who speak Hausa as their second language. Few of us would disagree with Cust's judgement that Hausa ‘has obtained the rank of a lingua franca and is the general vehicle of communication between the peoples speaking different languages’. Counting those who have recourse to Hausa as their second or vehicular language, it would be no exaggeration to claim that some 20 million persons ‘hear’ Hausa, as the West African languages so picturesquely express it.