Population of hausa speakers in nigeria newspapers

There are an estimated 2, languages spoken in Africa. There are also a few additional small families and minor languages that have yet to be classified. In addition, Africa has a wide variety of sign languages , many of which are language isolates. Several African languages are whistled to communicate over long distances. About a hundred of the languages of Africa are widely used for inter-ethnic communication. The high linguistic diversity of many African countries Nigeria alone has languages, one of the greatest concentrations of linguistic diversity in the world has made language policy a vital issue in the post-colonial era.

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Content:

• English threatens Nigeria's native languages
• Languages of Nigeria
• World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples - Nigeria
• Letter from Africa: Culture clash over Nigeria's rival alphabets
• The Languages of Nigeria
• Ethnicity in Nigeria
• Letter from Africa: Why Nigeria needs multi-lingual soldiers
• Main languages spoken at home in Nigeria 2020

WATCH RELATED VIDEO: NIGERIAN GIRL SPEAKING HAUSA

English threatens Nigeria's native languages

One of the most frequently encountered products of cultural contact is the borrowing. Borrowing is seen to be a source, an important source of language enrichment as well as of language endangerment. When a given language borrows a great amount of lexical terms from another language, we assume that the two languages have the same attributes or else they have been in contact for a long time.

As a result, the current study investigates the Kanuri borrowed words from Hausa. The study is limited to what lexical terms have been borrowed by the Kanuri from the Hausa, how has the borrowing come about as all languages have the means to create, enrich themselves out of their own resources.

In other words, why do the Kanuri people borrow a word or words from the Hausa while they have a fully equivalent beforehand? In this research, the researcher collected the data by taking notes and later arranged as documentations for further analysis.

Finally, the researcher finds that actually many consider the Kanuri borrowed terms from the Hausa as typically Kanuri and could not dissociate them with other Kanuri words. Hence, the necessity for the current study to bring out the endangerment of borrowing for the Kanuri people and point out the necessity for the language to coin new words neologism that could better enrich its lexicon.

As Akindele and Adegbite p. In fact, contact between languages is one of the critical mass of human behaviour, which is said to be induced by a number of factors.

According to Bello p. Abdulrahman and Shehu p. When languages come into contact over a period of time, through the social interaction of the speakers of the languages, the outcome is the diffusion of cultural items across linguistic boundaries. The studies of all the borrowings in major languages that have occurred are too extensive to cover, due to page limits in the current study; but what is worth mentioning is that the Kanuri and Hausa languages are no exception to the rules.

In other words, within the larger scope of languages contact, we will analyze, in this paper, the phenomenon of lexical borrowing that occurs from Hausa to Kanuri and its consequences positive or negative. Process of importing linguistic items from one linguistic system into another one, a process that occurs at any time two cultures are in contact over a period of time Hoffa, For Haugen p.

Akindele and Adegbite p. For Uriel Weinreich , the most frequently encountered product of cultural contact is the set of loanwords that follow from in cultural communication. What is more, there are also scholars who have categorized borrowing: Prasasty p. Ashafa, S. Secondly, the relative numbers of speakers of the two languages and lastly, whether or not the language lent by other speakers carry its fixed habit from their own old language into the new one.

As for Molina and Albir p. Our focus in this research is related to pure borrowing. We talk of pure lexical borrowing when a word or expression is transferred, without any change, from a source language Hausa in this case to a target language Kanuri in this case. Thus, the case in point is the spread of several words from Hausa vernacular in Damagaram that have penetrated the lexicon of the Kanuri; This is, because, Hausa and Kanuri share the same environment for long, that borrowing is not just a feature of bilingualism and multilingualism but also a feature of monolingualism.

What is good to raise at this level of analysis is that lexical borrowing has been an interest to various fields of linguistics for some time Whitney, ; De Saussure, ; Pedersen, However, explaining why languages change is generally difficult, and as well as explaining why languages borrow words is no exception especially when the language already owns words to denote things.

Also, the influence of one language on another may occur in all areas of grammar, including the lexicon, morphology, phonology, syntax and semantics.

About tens of hundreds of the Kanuri borrowing terms from Hausa are, up to date, considered as typically kanuri and that could not be dissociated with other Kanuri words while existing kanuri words are getting out of use. The rhetorical question, which we are tempted to ask here, is whether Kanuri people are facing linguistic suicide and or cultural endangerment.

The simplest kind of influence that one language may exert on another is the borrowing of words whereas the most widespread linguistic evidence of language contact according to Ashafa, S. Since contact is the basis for borrowing linguistic items from one language to another, it is pertinent to examine the historical contact between Hausa and Kanuri, which might have, exist because of religion, politics and mostly trade contact influences.

What follows is an overview of the contact between the Hausa and the Kanuri. The Hausa people are longtime neighbours of the Kanuri people. The relationship of Hausa and the Kanuri people still stands in Africa as one of the best among ancient African Kingdoms. These two groups of people respect each other and they always support each other at the time of needs and distress. The two have a very strong historical trading relationship.

The kanuri kingdom with its remnant cities, provinces and states like Borno and Yobe states in Nigeria, Damagaram Zinder in Niger … were said to have originated from the East. Abubakar n. The expansions of the Kanuri Empire in present Chad led to a continuous migration to the west of Lake Chad into present Nigeria and bordering Niger Cyffer, n. By then, Kanuri played the dominant role and acted as a language of wider communication.

During the past decades, we observed the decrease of Kanuri and the increase of Hausa. So Kanuri gradually lost its function as a language of wider communication while Hausa, through intensive contact phenomena become more prominent, grew rapidly, took over its role and became the language of wider communication Phillips, p.

As a result of everyday contact between them, many lexical items are found in each of the languages. Thanks to the social interactions, the Kanuri or the speakers of Kanuri, particularly employ various terms, which are originally Hausa, in their daily communications. This is because, as said earlier, not only it is true that many factors influence the amount and rate of borrowing, but it is also true that when a given language borrows lexical terms from another language, we assume that the two languages have the same attributes or else they have been in contact for a relatively long period.

Rightly, Hudson supports that the most widespread linguistic evidence of language contact is the presence of words borrowed from one language to another and which became part of the language. As a result, the current study, in the next section, investigates the Kanuri borrowed words from Hausa that have penetrated Kanuri language.

Yet, because of everyday contact between them, many lexical items are found in each of the two languages. There is no doubt the most conspicuous type of language change is the appearance of new words in an existing language. At present, there are about different languages spoken in our planet and every one of these languages has a vocabulary containing thousands of words.

Consequently, Hoffa p. Borrowing is a way, one of the most frequent of enriching a language and speakers of all languages do it following the advent of new materials and or concepts.

As Haspelmat p. Below are some examples of words of Hausa borrowed from Kanuri and vice versa Table 1. Though our focus is Kanuri borrowed terms from Hausa, it is good to point out that the borrowing process is done through a certain reciprocity. In his Hausa reference grammar, Newman p. What is more, due to sociolinguistic dynamism, both Hausa and Kanuri are known to borrow either from Arabic or English languages Table 3. Table 1. Examples of Hausa words borrowed from Kanuri.

Table 2. Examples of words borrowed by Kanuri but yet, some of Arab origin. Table 3. Both Hausa and Kanuri often borrow words from Arab or English.

Some other time loanwords are assimilated; for instance, Kanuri and Hausa borrowed words like bread, brake, blue, driver, fridge etc, from English language and they finally adapt to their respective native sound patterns. At the phonological level, where organic sounds like ba da gy ky ky kwa tsa, za, etc are concerned, no matter how fluent a Kanuri speaker may be in Hausa language, they usually experience difficulty if not fail to pronounce words containing the abovementioned letters.

Instead, they alternate them to the closest available sound in their native language Table 4. Table 4. Examples of such related difficulties in pronunciation.

Haspelmath raises an interesting question such that why a borrowing had to take place at all? This is because all languages have the means to create novel expressions out of their own resources. Instead of borrowing a word, they could simply make up a new word.

And of course there are many other cases where it is not all clear why a language borrowed a word from another language, because a fully equivalent word existed before hand.

Why does Kanuri borrow the following words when equivalent words existed before hand as follows Table 5? So why does the Kanuri borrow to the extent to endanger or suicide itself? But, why do Kanuri people borrowed from Hausa while Kanuri already has the full equivalent words in its language?

We note with an unknown author that the term borrowing refers to a completed language change, a diachronic process that once started as.

Table 5. Words borrowed by Kanuri from Hausa yet, equivalent words exist before hand. Kanuri has been reported to have acted as a link to carry Arabic loans to other languages in the contact zone, including Hausa, that it has had an impact on many Chadic languages. Hausa as stated by Greenberg borrowed kanuri vocabulary in earlier times. As for Newman , the situation has been reversed and Hausa makes inroads into traditional Kanuri-speaking areas.

Then the living together, creates a flexibility in borrowing from one another, a flexibility that has enriched the vocabulary over the century. However, is it easier to borrow or to create new words Neologism? In order to answer to the actual need of communication, the language must be worked out and be better equipped. The world evolves, develops itself; languages change and develop. The question is to encourage the enrichment of language. That is why languages borrow to each other.

That borrowing is a source of enriching the language. But, this does not mean that there are no negative consequences as pointed out by the case of the Kanuri language; that a language that borrows too much risks endangerment or suicide even though, sometimes, it is easier to borrow than to create.

But we are of the same opinion with Haspelmath p. As no language has been rich enough to dispense itself from creating new words or expressions to meet its lexical need, neologism, cutting across every aspect of human life has become an important tool for language expansion through several processes of word formation.

Neologism is, as well, useful in the adaptation of the society to the needs of efficient communication. We have so far talked about borrowing as a source of enriching a language even if, with regards to the case of Kanuri, it endangers the language by impoverishing it of its own words while enriching it with words of another language in this case Hausa language. We are of the opinion that a language should innovate, create to become richer and give itself the means to move with the World.

No language is rich enough to dispense itself from neologism. Hence, whatever the motive that is at the origin of the creation of a word or of a concept, neologism, without saying, is a source of enrichment of the language.

Languages of Nigeria

Hausa is classified as a member of the Chadic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family of languages. It is the best known and most important member of the Chadic branch. It is the most widely used in the fields of education and it lays claim to a significant literatures. By way of number, it is spoken by an estimated 40 to 50 million people as a first and second language thus, it believed to be one of the most commonly spoken African languages. Hausa is also spoken in diaspora by traders, scholars and immigrants in urban areas of West Africa, for example, southern and central Nigeria, Benin Republic, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Togo as well as Chad and the Blue Nile Province and western region of the Sudan.

World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples - Nigeria

The launch of the newspaper speaks to their ambitious strategic plan in sustaining widespread followership. Hausa is the Chadic language spoken as a first language by some 44 million people, and a second language by another 20 million. The total number of Hausa speakers, according to the Ethnologue, an annual language reference publication, is estimated at 63 million. The newspaper has four sections, which it distributes to readers in PDF format on various social media platforms. The newspaper published several claims of attacks in parts of the Northeast, some of which were never reported in mainstream media, notable amongst them was the attack in Askira, an area that was the exclusive preserve of ISWAP arch-rival, Abubakar Shekau. ISWAP accused him of indiscriminate killings of civilians, claiming that the threats he issued against Dr. There are millions of ordinary people affected by conflict in Africa whose stories are missing in the mainstream media. HumAngle is determined to tell those challenging and under-reported stories, hoping that the people impacted by these conflicts will find the safety and security they deserve.

Letter from Africa: Culture clash over Nigeria's rival alphabets

The Fulani are approximately 16,, in Nigeria million inhabitants , 4,, in Guinea-Conakry 13 million inhabitants , 3,, in Senegal 16 million inhabitants , 3 million in Mali A Fulani community has also been formed in Sudan on the pilgrimage route to Mecca. The Sudanese Fulani community is the least studied and cannot be enumerated in the census process. Traditionally, the Fulani are transhumant herders, and they remain so, for the most part, even if gradually a certain number of them have become sedentary, both because of the constraints imposed on them by the progress of desertification in certain regions, because of their dispersion and mobility that encourage exchanges and miscegenation and because some governments have set up programmes aimed at settling the nomads.

The Languages of Nigeria

One of the most frequently encountered products of cultural contact is the borrowing. Borrowing is seen to be a source, an important source of language enrichment as well as of language endangerment. When a given language borrows a great amount of lexical terms from another language, we assume that the two languages have the same attributes or else they have been in contact for a long time. As a result, the current study investigates the Kanuri borrowed words from Hausa. The study is limited to what lexical terms have been borrowed by the Kanuri from the Hausa, how has the borrowing come about as all languages have the means to create, enrich themselves out of their own resources.

Ethnicity in Nigeria

In our series of letters from African journalists, the editor-in-chief of Nigeria's Daily Trust newspaper, Mannir Dan Ali, says instead of shouting to be heard, Nigerian soldiers have been told to learn more languages. The new regulation came in characteristic military fashion, giving soldiers a window of one year to learn to speak Nigeria's three main languages. It did not specify whether those unable to do so by November would lose their jobs. The languages in question - Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba - represent the three dominant communities in the country, but that still leaves out a large number of Nigerians from the country's several hundred other ethnic groups. Army spokesman Brigadier General Sani Usman Kukasheka has since clarified that soldiers need only learn the basics, but those with a certified level of proficiency will get bonuses. He explained that the idea was to help soldiers to carry out their duties more effectively and earn the trust of the communities in which they were deployed. If the initiative succeeds, Nigerians will be in for a shock when they hear greetings - such as "sannu" in Hausa, "ekason" in Yoruba or "kedu" in Igbo - from those in military fatigues.

Letter from Africa: Why Nigeria needs multi-lingual soldiers

A fifth group, the Ijaw, has been growing in population and influence and currently makes up another 10 percent. Though the groups originated in different parts of West Africa, religion, intermarriage and adoption of the Hausa language by the Fulani have unified the groups over time. In contemporary Nigerian society, they are often referred to collectively as Hausa-Fulani.

Main languages spoken at home in Nigeria 2020

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He actually never said that. Although Yoruba, Igbo, Ijaw, Fulfulde, and other major Nigerian languages have tens of millions of speakers, their speakers are, for the most part, ethnically affiliated with their languages. There are more than 25 million non-native Hausa speakers, according to many estimates. That means, like the English language, there are probably more people who speak Hausa as a non-native language than there are who speak it as a native language. It is now usual to distinguish between native- and non-native speaker varieties of Hausa in terms of vocabulary and pronunciation. There is even pidginised Hausa called Barikanci, which is spoken by non-native Hausa speakers in military barracks. By contrast, the Igbo language has the distinction of being the only endangered language that is currently spoken by millions of native speakers.

Despite pledging its support for ISIS , Boko Haram is not really interested in a global reform or revivalist movement. Their sights and goals are local. The goal of the movement, judged from the pronouncements of its former leader Muhammad Yusuf below, left and its current leader Abu bakar Shekau below, right , is to create an Islamic state in Northern Nigeria based upon the nascent Muslim state founded by the Prophet Muhammad in 7 th -century Medina.