Hausa is spoken as a first language by as many as 50 million
Africans. Hausa is also a lingua franca in many West African
countries. Hausa are concentrated primarily in Northern Nigeria
(perhaps 40 million) and Niger. There are also well-established
populations in Ghana and Cameroon.
Throughout the areas where Hausa is spoken, it is remarkably
uniform in pronunciation, vocabulary, and structure. Indeed,
the varieties of Hausa are at least as mutually comprehensible
as the varieties of English. Based on examples of linguistic
variation and uniformity available from other parts of Africa
and the world.
Hausa is one of the most extensively researched of all sub-Saharan
languages, and has a long tradition of song and poetry within
a cosmopolitan Islamic culture that arose largely from the
position of the old Hausa states astride the trans-Saharan
and savanna trade routes. As a lingua franca in areas of West
Africa, the language has grown and adapted to different social
environments. Broadcasting in Hausa from the BBC World Service,
Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, Radio Moscow and Radio Peking,
hausa language is constantly adapting to meet the communicative
needs of modern current affairs, science and business.
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