HAUSA LANGUAGE

Hausa is the Chadic language (a branch of the Afroasiatic language family) with the largest number of speakers, spoken as a first language by some 44 million people, and as a second language by another 20 million. The total number of Hausa speakers is estimated at 63 million, according to Ethnologue.^[6] The ancestral language of the Hausa people, one of the largest ethnic groups in Central Africa, Hausa is mostly spoken throughout southern Niger and northern Nigeria. It has developed into a lingua franca across much of Western Africa for purposes of trade.

Areas of Niger and Nigeria where Hausa people are based.

Native speakers of Hausa, the Hausa people, are mostly found in Niger, in Northern Nigeria, and in Chad. Furthermore, the language is used as a lingua franca by non-native speakers in most of Northern Nigeria and Southern Niger, and as a trade languageacross a much larger swathe of West Africa (Benin, Ghana, Cameroon, Togo, Ivory Coast) and parts of Sudan.

Hausa belongs to the West Chadic languagessubgroup of the Chadic languages group, which in turn is part of the Afroasiatic language family.

                

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