The Hausa People / Les Haoussas / شعب هَوْسَ

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• published: 01 Aug 2008
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This video is a very quick intro on the Hausa people and Hausa speakers. There's a few interesting bits of information about the history and stats of the Hausa and Hausa speakers across Africa. DETAILED INFORMATION: The Hausa (or Haoussa, Hausawa, Aausa, Gambari, Takari) are a people based in Northern Nigeria and Niger, but are present in many parts of West Africa, with sizable communities present in Ghana, the northern halves of Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso and Cameroon. The westernmost Hausa communities are present in Gambia (8,400); the 'Haoussa' and 'Ansongo' regions of eastern Mali; as well as Sierra Leone. Historically, Hausa-speaking communities were also present in the Timbuktu/Tombouctou region, where the village of 'Guezou Haoussa' exists to this day. The northernmost Hausa communities present in West Africa are based around the Saharan city of Agadez in northern Niger. There are also sizable communities present in Chad, Sudan and smaller urban migrant communities in Central and North Africa. The Hausa language is widely used as a lingua-franca between West African Muslims in the vast areas between Ghana / Burkina Faso and Cameroon, (further west, Dyula / Bambara and Soninke / Wangara are used instead, although Hausa is still understood in varying degrees among people in Burkina Faso and northwestern Cote d'Ivoire). It is possible to traverse the region from the Sahara to the coastal forests, or travel between West and Northeastern Africa, and encounter Hausawa (Hausa-speaking) communities throughout. The Hausa language itself belongs to the Chadic group of Afro-Asiatic languages, and is the most widely spoken from this group. Many other Chadic languages exist in the area between northern Nigeria and the Central African Republic that are related to the Hausa language in varying degrees. Fulani and Songhai (Zarma) inparticular have influenced Hausa pronunciation to the extent that the languages (all belonging to different language-families) can be said to belong to the same sprachbund. A sprachbund is a group of unrelated languages that through extended exposure, have come to use the same sound-systems, conjugations or shibboleths not seen outside of the group. This is seen in the use of particles between Songhai and Hausa (the fundamental 'ga' and 'da' particles or modifiers, various nouns, adjectives and verbs, common to both, but not to others), and the use of implosive 'b' and 'd' sounds, and the final but not initial '~n' particle (used between both Pulaar/Fulfulde, Songhai and Chadic languages, but not locally seen outside of this group). What is important to note about the Hausa people is that, despite their language being in the Chadic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family, Hausawa (Hausa native-speakers) cannot relate to one particular genotype, nor do they share any particular features that distinguish them from other African groups. On the contrary, Hausawa can range from people of Tuareg and part-Arab ancestry in desert climes, to people of Chadic, Fulani, Mandinka or Sudanic ancestry in the sahel, to people of Guinean or Bantu ancestry in the savannas and heavily forested regions of the continent. This makes the concept of Hausa-speakers somewhat akin to English-speaking, Hispanic or Francophonic identity. A Hausa man or woman may also be a Francophone, or belong to the Arab or English-speaking world, as this video shows.