Hausa (; in Hausa: / ; Ajami: ) is a Chadic language spoken by over 94.5 million people in West Africa, primarily by the Hausa people in Niger (where it is the sole official language, having replaced French in 2025) and Nigeria. It serves as a lingua franca in most of northern Nigeria, southern Niger, as well as in northern Cameroon, Ghana (mainly in the north of the country, but also extensively among the Zongo communities all across the country, including in the capital, Accra), Benin and Togo, southern Chad, and parts of Sudan. Hausa also has a significant number of speakers in Côte d’Ivoire and the Central African Republic.
Hausa is a member of the Afroasiatic language family and is the most widely spoken language within the Chadic branch of that family. Hausa is tonal, using relative pitch both to distinguish words, and mark grammatical categories. Ethnologue estimated that it was spoken as a first language by some 58 million people and as a second language by another 36 million, bringing the total number of Hausa speakers to an estimated 94 million.
In Nigeria, the Hausa film industry is known as Kannywood.
Classification
Hausa belongs to the West Chadic languages subgroup of the Chadic languages group, which in turn is part of the Afroasiatic language family.
Geographic distribution Native speakers of Hausa, the Hausa people, are mostly found in southern Niger and northern Nigeria. The language is used as a lingua franca by non-native speakers in most of northern Nigeria, southern Niger, northern Cameroon, northern Ghana, northern Benin, northern Togo, southern Chad and parts of Sudan.
By country Nigeria
In Nigeria, Hausa is dominant throughout the north, though not in the states of Kwara, Kogi and Benue. States and cities in which Hausa predominates include Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, Daura, Gobir, Zaria, Sokoto, Birnin Kebbi, Gusau, Dutse, Hadejia, Bauchi, Misau, Zamfara, Gombe, Nafada, Maiduguri, Yobe, Yola, Jalingo, Jos, Lafia, Nasarawa, Minna, Kontagora, Keffi and Abuja.
Niger Hausa is spoken by approximately 53% of the population of Niger and was declared the country's official language in 2025.République du Niger, "The massive African country that's just adopted a new official language" express.co.uk (accessed 20 April 2025) It is commonly spoken in the cities of Maradi, Diffa, Tahoua, Zinder, Tillaberi, Dosso, and Agadez.
Cameroon Hausa is spoken in the north of Cameroon, including the cities of Ngaoundere, Garoua, and Maroua.
Ghana Hausa is the lingua franca of the Zongo communities across Ghana.
Benin Hausa is spoken in northern Benin, including Parakou, Kandi, Natitingou, and Djougou.
Togo Hausa is spoken in northern Togo, including Sokode, Kara, and Dapaong.
Chad Hausa is spoken in the southern part of Chad, including N'Djamena.
Sudan In Sudan, Hausa is spoken in Jazirah, Darfur, Blue Nile, Kassala, Sennar, Gadaref, Kordofan, Red Sea State, White Nile State, and River Nile.
Speakers by country Hausa is widely used as a lingua franca across much of West Africa and is spoken by people from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds across Northern Nigeria and Niger.
+ Hausa speakers, Ethnologue (2025) Country Hausa speakers (L1+L2) million million million million
Dialects
Hausa presents a wide uniformity wherever it is spoken. However, linguists have identified dialect areas with a cluster of features characteristic of each one.
Traditional dialects Eastern Hausa dialects include Dauranci in Daura; Kananci in Kano; Bausanci in Bauchi; Gudduranci and Katagumci in Katagum, Misau, and part of Borno; Hadejanci in Hadejiya.
Western Hausa dialects include Sakkwatanci in Sokoto; Katsinanci in Katsina; Arewanci (also a Northern dialect) and Gobiranci in Dogondoutchi; Adaranci in Ader; Kabanci in Kebbi; Zanhwaranci in Zamfara; Kurfayanci in Kourfeye; Damagaranci in Damagaram; Tibiranci in Madari. Katsinanci is transitional between Eastern and Western dialects. Sakkwatanci is used in a variety of classical Hausa literature, and is often known as Classical Hausa.
Zazzaganci in Zazzau is the major Southern dialect.
The Daura (Dauranci) and Kano (Kananci) dialects are the standard. The BBC, Deutsche Welle, Radio France Internationale and Voice of America offer Hausa services on their international news web sites using Dauranci and Kananci. In recent language development Zazzaganci took over the innovation of writing and speaking the current Hausa language use.
Northernmost dialects and loss of tonality The western to eastern Hausa dialects of Kurhwayanci, Damagaranci and Adaranci, represent the traditional northernmost limit of native Hausa communities. These are spoken in the northernmost sahel and mid-Saharan regions in west and central Niger in the Tillaberi, Tahoua, Dosso, Maradi, Agadez and Zinder regions. While mutually comprehensible with other dialects (especially Sakkwatanci, and to a lesser extent Gaananci), the northernmost dialects have slight grammatical and lexical differences owing to frequent contact with the Zarma, Fula, and Tuareg groups and cultural changes owing to the geographical differences between the grassland and desert zones. These dialects also have the quality of bordering on non-tonal pitch accent dialects.
This link between non-tonality and geographic location is not limited to Hausa alone, but is exhibited in other northern dialects of neighbouring languages; example includes differences within the Songhay language (between the non-tonal northernmost dialects of Koyra Chiini in Timbuktu and Koyraboro Senni in Gao; and the tonal southern Zarma dialect, spoken from western Niger to northern Ghana), and within the Soninke language (between the non-tonal northernmost dialects of Imraguen and Nemadi spoken in east-central Mauritania; and the tonal southern dialects of Senegal, Mali and the Sahel).
Ghanaian Hausa dialect The Ghanaian Hausa dialect (Gaananci), spoken in Ghana and Togo, is a distinct western native Hausa dialect-bloc with adequate linguistic and media resources available. Separate smaller Hausa dialects are spoken by an unknown number of Hausa further west in parts of Burkina Faso, and in the Haoussa Foulane, Badji Haoussa, Guezou Haoussa, and Ansongo districts of northeastern Mali (where it is designated as a minority language by the Malian government), but there are very little linguistic resources and research done on these particular dialects at this time.
Gaananci forms a separate group from other Western Hausa dialects, as it now falls outside the contiguous Hausa-dominant area, and is usually identified by the use of c for ky, and j for gy. This is attributed to the fact that Ghana's Hausa population descend from Hausa-Fulani traders settled in the zongo districts of major trade-towns up and down the previous Asante, Gonja and Dagomba kingdoms stretching from the sahel to coastal regions, in particular the cities of Accra (Sabon Zango, Nima), Takoradi and Cape Coast.
Gaananci exhibits noted inflected influences from Zarma, Gur, Jula-Bambara, Akan, and Soninke, as Ghana is the westernmost area in which the Hausa language is a major lingua-franca among sahelian/Muslim West Africans, including both Ghanaian and non-Ghanaian zango migrants primarily from the northern regions, or Mali and Burkina Faso. Ghana also marks the westernmost boundary in which the Hausa people inhabit in any considerable number. Immediately west and north of Ghana (in Côte d'Ivoire, and Burkina Faso), Hausa is abruptly replaced with Dioula–Bambara as the main sahelian/Muslim lingua-franca of what become predominantly Manding areas, and native Hausa-speakers plummet to a very small urban minority.
Because of this, and the presence of surrounding Akan, Gbe, Gur and Mande languages, Gaananci was historically isolated from the other Hausa dialects. Despite this difference, grammatical similarities between Sakkwatanci and Ghanaian Hausa determine that the dialect, and the origin of the Ghanaian Hausa people themselves, are derived from the northwestern Hausa area surrounding Sokoto.
Hausa is also widely spoken by non-native Gur, and Mandé Ghanaian Muslims, but differs from Gaananci, and rather has features consistent with non-native Hausa dialects.
Other native dialects Hausa is also spoken in various parts of Cameroon and Chad, which combined the mixed dialects of Northern Nigeria and Niger. In addition, Arabic has had a great influence in the way Hausa is spoken by the native Hausa speakers in these areas.
Non-native Hausa In West Africa, Hausa's use as a lingua franca has given rise to a non-native pronunciation that differs vastly from native pronunciation by way of key omissions of implosive and ejective consonants present in native Hausa dialects, such as ɗ, ɓ and kʼ/ƙ, which are pronounced by non-native speakers as d, b and k respectively. This creates confusion among non-native and native Hausa speakers, as non-native pronunciation does not distinguish words like ("correct") and ("one-by-one"). Another difference between native and non-native Hausa is the omission of vowel length in words and change in the standard tone of native Hausa dialects (ranging from native Fulani and Tuareg Hausa-speakers omitting tone altogether, to Hausa speakers with Gur or Yoruba mother tongues using additional tonal structures similar to those used in their native languages). Use of masculine and feminine gender nouns and sentence structure are usually omitted or interchanged, and many native Hausa nouns and verbs are substituted with non-native terms from local languages.
Non-native speakers of Hausa numbered more than 25 million and, in some areas, live close to native Hausa. It has replaced many other languages especially in the north-central and north-eastern part of Nigeria and continues to gain popularity in other parts of Africa as a result of Hausa movies and music which spread out throughout the region.
Hausa-based pidgins
There are several pidgin forms of Hausa. Barikanchi was formerly used in the colonial army of Nigeria. Gibanawa is currently in widespread use in Jega in northwestern Nigeria, south of the native Hausa area.
Loan words The Hausa language has a long history of borrowing words from other languages, usually from the languages being spoken around and near Hausaland. +WordLanguageakwati - 'box', agogo - 'clock', ashana - 'matches'Yorubadattijo - 'old man', inna – 'mother', kawu – 'uncle'Fulanikaratu – 'reading', rubutu – 'writing', birni – 'city'Kanuri
Phonology
Consonants Hausa has between 23 and 25 consonant phonemes depending on the speaker.
+Consonant phonemesLabialAlveolarPost-alveolarVelarGlottalpal.plainlab.NasalPlosive/Affricateimplosivevoiced~tenuisejective~()Fricativevoicedtenuis~~ApproximantRhotic
The three-way contrast between palatalized , plain , and labialized velars is found only before long and short , e.g. ('grass'), ('to increase'), ('shea-nuts'). Before front vowels, only palatalized and labialized velars occur, e.g. ('jealousy') vs. ('side of body'). Before rounded vowels, only labialized velars occur, e.g. ('ringworm').
Glottalic consonants Hausa has glottalic consonants (implosives and ejectives) at four or five places of articulation (depending on the dialect). They require movement of the glottis during pronunciation and have a staccato sound.
They are written with modified versions of Latin letters. They can also be denoted with an apostrophe, either before or after depending on the letter, as shown below:
ɓ / b', an implosive consonant, , sometimes ; ɗ / d', an implosive , sometimes ; ts', an ejective consonant, or , according to the dialect; ch', an ejective (does not occur in Kano dialect) ƙ / k', an ejective ; and are separate consonants;