HAUSA TRANSLATION

Hausa Language belongs to the Chadic languages group under the Afro-Asiatic family of langauges, more specifically it’s a part of the West Chadic subgroup. It is spoken by about 39 million people, which includes 24 million first language and 15 million second language speakers. Hausa serves as the official language in Northern Nigeria and is the national language of Niger. Ghanaian Muslims use its as their official language.

Novatia has worked on many Hausa translation projects for big and small businesses, as well as individuals. We have a substantial team of professional Hausa translation providers translating across many languages to and from Hausa. Our translators are highly qualified and experienced; they also specialize in various fields and hence provide specialized translation services like business translation, legal translation, patent translation and banking translations among many others.

• Hausa is mainly spoken in northern Nigeria and Niger, other areas with substantial population of Hausa speakers include Chad, Benin, Eritrea, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Congo, CAR, Sudan, Togo and Germany. It is also taught in African and other universities around the world.

• Hausa is written using the Latin alphabet called boko. This system of writing was introduced by the British colonial administration in the 1930s and till the 1950s both ajami and boko were in usage, however after that boko became dominant and is now the primary writing system for Hausa.

• Hausa was earlier written using the Ajami script derived from Arabic. It is still used, but sparely and mostly in writing poetry. Apart from that there is at least one newspaper that uses the Ajami script and a few books.

• Hausa writing in Arabic does not follow a standard spelling system hence variations in spelling of various words, as written by different writers can be expected.

• Hausa has also been written using three other writing systems, they include a Hausa alphabet which is supposedly used north of Maradi in Niger and is claimed to have ancient origins, a script that was apparently introduced in the 1980s by the Raina Kama – a writing and publishing group and Tafi, a script proposed in the 1970s. These scripts were never used by more than a few individuals.

• The various Hausa dialects are divided into the following broad categories-
  • Eastern Hausa dialects
  • Western Hausa dialects
  • Northern Hausa dialects
  • Southern Hausa dialect
  • Ghanaian Hausa Dialect
  • Non-native Hausa

• The Ghanaian Hausa dialect has certain characteristics which indicate that it was derived from Western Hausa. However it is spoken outside Hausa dominant regions and is hence identified as a separate group.

• Non-native Hausa dialects are those which are spoken by non-native Hausa speakers living in West Africa. They form a sizeable number of 15 million.

• Depending upon the speaker, Hausa languages demonstrates from 23 to 25 consonant phonemes and 5 phonemic vowels.