Grammar of the Hausa Language

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from University of Toronto http://www.archive.org/details/grammarofhausalOOsch . ^<u GRAMMAR r^/ OF THE HAUSA LANGUAGE. BY REV. J. F.'ICHON, CHAPLAIN OF MELVILLE HOSPITAL, CHATHAM; MEMBER OF THE GEKMAX ORIENTAL SOCIETY ; AND LATE MISSIONARY OF THE CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY. LONDON CHURCH MISSIONARY HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE. 1R62. ' • T T-: T : : • : : : : Genesis xii. 3. •• • T T I • T Psalm Ixviii. 81. Kal e^TjXOe vlkmv /cat 7va vcfcârj. Revelation vi. 2. AV. M. WATTS, CROWN COURT, TKMPLE BAR PREFATORY REMARKS. The language, a Grammar of which is now presented to the public, is called the Hausa. The origin of the name itself I have not been able to ascertain, nor has Dr. Barth' been more successful than myself in the endeavour to settle the question. It may be mentioned, however, that the word Hausa is explained by some as denoting the language rather than the people, and that my interpreters at Sierra Leone insisted on rendering the passages referring to the miraculous gift of tongues by " speaking another Hausa ;" but as we must say " yi magana-n-Hausa," or " yi magana-n-HausaAva," that is, to speak the language of the Hausa country, or of the Hausa people, this individual assertion carries little weight. And the fact that a Hausa man is called "bahause,"^ which forms its plural regularly into " hausawa," seems to deprive it of all appearance of probability. The extent of the territory in which the Hausa is the vernacular language, and the notoriety it has attained among other nations being of much greater importance than the origin of its name, I shall endeavour to exhibit these two subjects at some length, as it will be seen thereby that so much time, labour, and expense, bestowed upon the reduction of this language, have not been misapplied by the Committee of the Church Missionary Society, to whose perseverance and fore- thought the accomplishment of this present work is attributable. I am convinced that the future—and that probably no dis- tant one—will recognise the hand of Providence in directing attention to the reduction of this language, which is calculated to render it accessible to Missionaries, travellers, and commer- ' Earth's Travels, vol. ii. page 72. 2 See Grammar, § 19. : 11 PREFATORY REMARKS. cial men as the medium of communication with the inhabitants of Central Africa. The territory in which the Hausa is the vernacular language may with some limitation be said to be the Soudan.^ The Hausas themselves divide their country into seven provinces, generally called " Hausa bokoi :" the names of all the seven I have never been able to ascertain correctly from natives : one or two were sometimes missing, or different names given by different informants. A rivalry for the honour of belonging to them induced some to number their own native countries amongst them ; and' it was often amusing to witness with what warmth they would argue and stigmatize each other's countries, as "Bansa Hausa," that is, with Dr. Barth,^ " Bastard Hausa." I therefore take the liberty to avail myself of the labours of Barth in quoting the names of seven provinces as recorded by him. They are the following— "Biram, Doura, Gober, Kano, Rano, Katsena, and Zegzeg ; and the seven other provinces or countries, in which the Hausa language has spread to a great extent, although it is not the original language of the inhabitants, are, Zanfara, Kebbi, Nupe, Gwari, Youri, Yariba, and Kororofa." Among the northern provinces, I find in my collections Zinder, and among the western, Rabba, and Sokoto, mentioned. A glance at the map in Dr. Barth's most instructive Travels will show that the territory in which the Hausa is the vernacular language is of considerable extent, probably greater than that occupied by any other language in Central Africa. It is moreover, not only in those parts that this language is known and understood, and serving as the medium of communication it has, from various causes, such as the dispersion of Hausas among other nations, through the slave-trade, the commercial pursuits of the natives of the Soudan, and the beauty of the language itself, become, as it were, to Africa, what the French Is to Europe ; and that this is no vague assertion of my own will ' Compare Dialogues, and a small portion of the New Testament in the English, Arabic, Hausa (or Sudanese), and Bornu languages. London, 1853. 2 Vol. ii. page 72. PREFATORY REMARKS. Ul be proved by many undeniable facts, and by the testimonies of travellers. Sierra Leone contains many of every province of Hausa. Near Cape Coast a little village was pointed out to me inhabited by Hausas, and I have met some at the island of Fernando-Po. At Cape Coast, Lander engaged his faithful Paskoe, the Hausa interpreter, with whom he commenced his travels at Badagry ; and there is every reason to conclude that the Hausa language has been the only medium of communication and intercourse with people, chiefs, and kings, from Badagry to Borgou, Rabba, Boosa, Yaouri, Egga, and down the Niger to the Ibo country. No native words are found in Lander's three interesting volumes except such as are Hausa, and the author himself very frequently refers to the extent of the Hausa language. " It is understood," he says,^ " by the generality of the natives of Borgou, both young and old, almost as well as their mother tongue, and it is spoken by the ma- jority of them with considerable fluency." At Gunga only it was that even the Hausa language was not understood.^ I can corroborate the above statement from my own experience and observation in the River Niger as far as Eggan. Leaving the west for the present, and passing over the above-mentioned seven provinces to the north, it is most gratifying to find that it has there also spread far and wide, and obtained the same notoriety as in the west, every traveller bearing testimony to this fact. Clapperton's incidental allusions to the importance of the Hausa language are numerous. Oberweg congratulates the Expedition in having met with an interpreter who was master of Afnu, that is, the Hausa language. Barth,^ writing to Professor Lepsius from Ai-Salah, speaks of the absolute necessity of mastering the Hausa language, and of his inability on that account to pay much attention to the Tuareg, observing that it was the less to be regretted, since all Asljenawas spoke the Hausa, and used it 1 Lander's Travels, vol. ii. pag-e 2. 2 Vol. iii. page 19 ; compare, however, pages 49, 78, 82, &c. &c. ; IV PREFATOKY REMARKS. even more generally than the Targia.^ Numerous allusions to the paramount importance of this language from Earth's Correspondence and Travels might be quoted; but as the philological laboui-s of that accomplished scholar may shortly be expected, I would rather refer the reader to his own statements, being convinced that my observations will be confirmed by him. Dorugu, whom I shall introduce shortly, speaks (in the interesting narrative of his life and travels) of meeting Hausas everywhere from Kukawa to Tripoli; and in the last-mentioned place he met liberated Hausas in great numbers, inhabiting a separate village, and desirous of returning to their own country if they could obtain the means of doing so. On the steamer from Tripoli to Malta he met Hausas, from whom he learnt that there were many of their nation to be found in Egypt, and even in Stambul, or Constantinople and the very same thing I was told at Sierra Leone by a traveller, who had visited those parts, by the name of Ari Babaribari. With a view to ascertain whether Hausa was known in the countries along the Tshadda, from the confluence of that river and the Niger, I consulted Crowther^ ; and found that from the Confluence to Hamaruwa, a distance of three hundred miles, the Hausa was understood, and of immense service to the Expedition. But Crowther's own summary, in the Ap- pendix, speaks so entirely the conviction of my own mind, that I cannot do better than to quote his own words. " The Hausa," (after enumerating twelve languages in which the Bible ought to be translated,) he says,'' " is the most important of all ; it is the commercial language of Central Africa. '^ At Oru, in the Delta, we already commenced meeting with ' Gumprecht's, Earth's, and Oberweg-'s Untersuchung-s Reise nach dem Tshad See, und in das Innere von Afrika, Berlin 1852 : compare pages 40, 41, 59, 62, 93, 116, 145, 146, 147, 148, 150, 151, 160, 168, 169, and many more incidental expressions throughout the whole work. 2 Journal of an Expedition to the Nig-er and Tshadda Rivers, 1864. 3 Pages 202, 203. PREFATORY REMARKS. V solitary opportunities of communicating with the people through Hausa slaves. From Abo we engaged a Hausa interpreter, who was very serviceable to us throughout the Expedition. At Idda we found that the Hausa language was becoming more generally spoken by the inhabitants : salutations in that language generally sounded in our ears. At Igbegbe, near the Confluence, the Hausa is one of the prevailing languages spoken by the mixed population of that market town, and it is the chief medium of communication in commercial trans- actions, though Igbira Is the language of the place. " At Yimalia in the Igbira country, at Oruku in the Bassa country, at Doma, also among the hitherto unknown Mitshis, among the inhabitants of the extensive Kororofo, and with the Fulanis of Hamaruwa, the Hausa lanoûacre wâs the chief medium of communication, both with the chiefs and with the people whom we visited during the late Expedition ; and I was told that the knowledge of Hausa will brino- any one to Mecca.

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