Hausa

Orthographic development & variants

Hausa has been written in ajami since at least the early 17th century.whl

There is no standard system of using ajami for Hausa, and different writers may use letters with different values.whl

There are or have been a number of variant practices for writing Hausa ajami. There are also some confusable characters. They include the following:

• There is some variation in sources about the use of ی [U+06CC ARABIC LETTER FARSI YEH] versus ي [U+064A ARABIC LETTER YEH]. Most sources seem to agree, however, that the iː uses ى [U+0649 ARABIC LETTER ALEF MAKSURA] , whereas the end of a diphthong or the consonant j uses one of the former. However, some sources show YEH instead of FARSI YEH for medial forms. They only differ in that the isolate and final forms of FARSI YEH have no dots, ie. ییی vs. ييي
• Unicode policy for the Arabic script is to encode fully precomposed characters rather than to use combining characters for ijam. Therefore, it is inappropriate to use ۛ [U+06DB ARABIC SMALL HIGH THREE DOTS] (wagaf) to create characters such as ڟ [U+069F ARABIC LETTER TAH WITH THREE DOTS ABOVE], even though the Hausa consider the wagaf to be a modifier letter rather than part of the base character.lpp
• The wagaf may appear above or below the base, but Unicode standardises on above.
• The characters with wagaf that are based on characters with a dot above the base retain that dot as well as the three dots of the wagaf. For example, ࣃ is completely different from the character ڠ [U+06A0 ARABIC LETTER AIN WITH THREE DOTS ABOVE], even though the difference is visually subtle.
• The difference between ن [U+0646 ARABIC LETTER NOON] and ࢽ [U+08BD ARABIC LETTER AFRICAN NOON] comes down to the absence of dots associated with a character in final position, ie. ن ننن vs. ࢽ ࢽࢽࢽ In medial position, the two contrasting characters look identical.
• ك [U+0643 ARABIC LETTER KAF] and ک [U+06A9 ARABIC LETTER KEHEH] are identical in the Kano style.

Joining forms

Because the Arabic script is 'cursive' (ie. joined-up) writing, letters tend to have different shapes depending on whether they join with adjacent letters or not (see cursive). In addition, vowels can be represented using different characters, depending on where in a word they appear.

In scripts such as Arabic, several characters have no left-joining form. In what follows we'll use the characters ي and د to illustrate shapes. The former can join on both sides, but the latter can only join on the right.

Left-joining glyphs are commonly called initial; dual-joining are called medial; and right-joining are called final. Glyphs that don't join on either side are called isolated. However, these glyph shapes can be found in various places within a single word.

Word-initial characters usually have initial glyph shapes (eg. 064A ). However, characters that only join to the right will use an isolated glyph shape (eg. 062F ). Furthermore, words beginning with a vowel are always preceded by a vowel carrier, which is normally ا (eg. 0627 06CC or 0627 064E ).

Word-medial characters will typically join on both sides (eg. 064A ) but those that only join to the right will use a final glyph (eg. 062F ). However, if either of those is preceded by another character that only joins to the right, the glyph shapes rendered will be initial (eg. 064A ) and isolated (eg. 062F ), respectively.

Word-final characters will typically use a final glyph shape (eg. 064A and 062F ). However, if the previous character joins only to the right, they will use isolated glyph shapes (eg.064A and 062F ).

In all this contextual glyph shaping the basic shapes used for a character can vary significantly in a script like Arabic. This also includes some characters that only have ijam dots in certain contexts.

Letters

Combining marks

Punctuation

Other

Vowel sounds

Consonant sounds

	labial	dental	alveolar	post- alveolar	retroflex	palatal	velar	glottal
stop	b ɓ	t d ɗ					k ɡ kʷ ɡʷ kʼ kʷʼ kʲ kʲʼ gʲ	ʔ
affricate		t͡sʼ		t͡ʃ d͡ʒ
fricative	f fʲ		s z	ʃ ʒ				h
nasal	m		n
approximant	w		l			j j̰
trill/flap			ɾ		ɽ

Tone

Hausa is a tonal language. Each of its five vowels may have low tone, high tone or falling tone.whl

Structure

Hausa has 3 syllable types: CV, CVV, and CVC, where VV can be a long vowel or a diphthong.bc The long vs. short vowel distinction is phonemically important, however when a syllable with a long vowel acquires and final consonant, the vowel is shortened.

Consonant clusters may occur where syllables are side by side, but not within a syllable. Gemination is, however, a distinctive feature.bc

Semivowels ʷ and ʲ may occur after an initial consonant.

Vowel summary table

The following table summarises the main vowel to character assignments.

Each table cell shows word-initial, word-medial, and word-final forms from right to left. The glyphs shown are illustrative; alternative shapes may occur (see joining_forms). Click/tap on items to see a list of the components for that cell.

In word-initial position vowels are usually attached to a consonant letter representing a glottal stop. It is shown here because it acts as a vowel carrier (see standalone). Otherwise, unlike orthographies for languages such as Arabic and Urdu, the characters used to represent a vowel are normally the same, regardless of the position within a word. The exception is the word-final oː, which breaks the regular pattern by adding an alef with sukun.

Observation: Need to check whether initial iː is written ىِٕ‍ or whether it should be إِى‍. Same for eː.

Observation: It appears to be very unusual for sounds other than a or i to appear at the start of a word.

Observation: It is very difficult to find information in the sources consulted, but my conclusion is that what would be an initial form of a vowel letter in Standard Arabic is normally written in Hausa by combining the usual vowel diacritic with a carrier, such as أ [U+0623 ARABIC LETTER ALEF WITH HAMZA ABOVE] or ع [U+0639 ARABIC LETTER AIN]. Where i don't have other information, these 'initial' forms are shown using AIN in the table.

The full set of characters needed to represent the Hausa vowels is the following. This set includes the glottal stop consonants shown above. See also standalone.

Note the use of ى and ی, rather than ي U+064A ARABIC LETTER YEH.

Combining marks used for vowels

Hausa uses the following combining characters for vowels.

0670 is never used alone, and is one of 2 diacritics used to write eː.

The diacritics 0654 and 0655 are only used where إ and أ are decomposed, which is rare.

Vowel letters

Diphthongs

Diphthongs ending with -i follow the initial vowel diacritic with یْ [U+06CC ARABIC LETTER FARSI YEH + U+0652 ARABIC SUKUN]. Note that this is not ى [U+0649 ARABIC LETTER ALEF MAKSURA] (which indicates long vowels). Two dots below are visible in medial position but not at the end of a word, eg. compare:

حَیْرَࢽْ

حَࢽْحَیْ

Diphthongs ending with -u follow the initial vowel diacritic with وْ [U+0648 ARABIC LETTER WAW + U+0652 ARABIC SUKUN].

حَوْسَا

Multipart vowels

The 5 multipart vowels listed here all indicate long versions of the vowels. The vowel diacritic is followed by a letter (and in 2 cases, additional characters). Diphthongs and glides are not included here, and nor are word-initial clusters.

Click on the letters for examples.

Standalone vowels

The syllable structure described in structure requires all syllables to begin with a consonant, so there are no true standalone vowels in Hausa. The closest one gets is a word that begins with one of the following characters representing a glottal stop.

These letters are followed by the relevant vowel characters, as shown in fig_vowelgrid.

أَغَدٜ

إِسْکَا

Observation: Need to check whether iː is written ىِٕ‍ or whether it should be إِى‍. Same for eː.

Vowel length

Long vowels are indicated using one of 0627, 0648, or 0649 after the vowel diacritic. See fig_vowelgrid.

Long vowel oː appears to also add اْ in final position, which is the only time it is distinguished from uː.

Nasalisation

Nasalisation is indicated by a syllable-final -n in the Latin orthography. There is a report that the tanwin diacritics are used for this in the ajami orthography, but this needs to be confirmed.

Tones

Although Hausa is a tonal language, the tone values are not written in ajami.

Vowel absence

Hausa uses ْ [U+0652 ARABIC SUKUN] to indicate that there is no vowel after a consonant. Vowel absence is usually marked (unlike Standard Arabic), including over the YEH or WAW that signal the final part of a diphthong.

حَࢽْتَا

حَیْرَࢽْ

Vowel sounds to characters

This section maps Hausa vowel sounds to common graphemes in the ajami orthography.

The columns run right to left and indicate typical word-initial, word-medial, and word-final usage. The joining forms shown are illustrative; alternative shapes may occur (see joining_forms).

Click on a grapheme to find other mentions on this page (links appear at the bottom of the page). Click on the character name to see examples and for detailed descriptions of the character(s) shown.

Consonant summary table

The following table summarises the main consonant to character assigments.

The right-hand column shows additional characters that may be used to write Hausa ajami, including some used for the Hafs orthography, and others used in borrowed words, or text written by speakers who don't make the phonemic distinctions in the table. They are not used for the Warsh orthography.

For additional details see consonant_mappings.

There is no official standard for how to write African languages in ajami, and there has been a good deal of variation over the history of the writing.dbs In addition, dialects of Hausa have different phonemic repertoires, which are reflected in their writing. So there is some variation as to which characters are mapped to which sounds, and the sets described here are a synthesis of sources describing modern usage.

The typical orthography is based on Warsh (Warš) forms, which incorporate Maghribi characteristics, and are often written with Kano style glyphs (as here). Some sources describe an alternative Hafs (Ḥafṣ) orthography, used with hand-written adaptations for the newspaper Al-Fijir.

Additional alternative shapes also occur, typically used for borrowed words, or because sounds are not differentiated in some regions. These are preceded by an asterisk in the table. (Warren-Rothlinaww lists a handful of other, less commonly attested shapes, but they are not listed here.)

In some cases the triple dot (known as wagaf) may be written by some below the base and by others above the base, but Unicode is standardising on glyphs that show it above.

Basic set (Warsh orthography)

These characters are a basic set used for the Warsh orthography. See also labpal.

ب, د, and ک may be used for glottalised sounds as well as normal sounds.

SIL's Alkalami font description@SIL,https://software.sil.org/alkalami/features/ includes a character used for ng which hasn't appeared in other resources. It is represented using 0763.

Labialised & palatalised consonants

Three consonant sounds in syllable initial position can be labialised ʷ or palatalised ʲ. They depend on an initial base consonant with a 3-dot diacritic, which may or may not be followed by و [U+0648 ARABIC LETTER WAW] or ی [U+06CC ARABIC LETTER FARSI YEH].

One base character was encoded in Unicode 4.1: ݣ [U+0763 ARABIC LETTER KEHEH WITH THREE DOTS ABOVE], used for combinations with the sound k. Unicode code points for the other two were encoded in Unicode v13. They are ࣃ [U+08C3 ARABIC LETTER GHAIN WITH THREE DOTS ABOVE] for ɡʷ/ɡʲ and ࣄ [U+08C4 ARABIC LETTER AFRICAN QAF WITH THREE DOTS ABOVE]for ƙʷ/ƙʲ. (Take care not to confuse these with ڠ [U+06A0 ARABIC LETTER AIN WITH THREE DOTS ABOVE] and ڨ [U+06A8 ARABIC LETTER QAF WITH THREE DOTS ABOVE], neither of which are used for Hausa.)

There is little information available about how these characters are used, and some ambiguity in what there is.

Warren-Rothlinaww says the following about these characters.

The labialized and palatalized velars /ɡʷ/ and /ɡʲ/, /kʷ/ and /kʲ/, and /ƙʷ/ and /ƙʲ/ are usually not written, e.g. کْي ⟨k⁰y⟩ and کْو⟨k⁰w⟩, as one might expect, but کِي ⟨kiy⟩ or کُو ⟨kuw⟩, and even with the following vowel sound intervening (e.g. کَو⟨kaw⟩ for /kwa/). As noted above for other distinctive Hausa sounds, three dots usually smaller than standard nuqaṭ may be added above for labialization and below for palatalization (e.g. ⟨k₃aw⁰taʾ⟩ kyauta).

Rather than provide characters with triple dots above and others with triple dots below, Unicode is standardising on above.

Looking at the samples in the Unicode proposallpp, there seem to be two different forms for each. It isn't clearly indicated (especially since the boko transcription doesn't indicate vowel length), but I find myself wondering whether they reflect the difference between long and short vowels. Here are some examples. Compare the top and bottom items for each bullet.

• ࣃُودَ ĝuwda gwadaࣃُمْࢽَ ĝum͓na gwamna
• ࣄُورَیْ ƙ̂uwray͓ ƙwaraiࣄُثٜىٰ ƙ̂uʧeıˈ ƙwace
• ࣄُیَا ƙ̂uyaɑ ƙyuyaࣄَالْلّٜىٰ ƙ̂aɑl͓l˖eıˈ ƙyalle

Universität Wien's document also shows it being used alone, eg. ݣَاشٜىٰ

  See a list of words (in the Boko orthography) using ʷ or using ʲ.

Other consonants

The following are additional characters that may be used to write Hausa ajami, including some used for the Hafs orthography, and others used in borrowed words, or text written by speakers who don't make the phonemic distinctions in the table above.

Dot variants

A typical feature of the Warsh orthography is that a character has dots in initial or medial positions, but none in final or isolate. Another is that the dots appear on the other side of the base in some characters from the side they would appear in the Hafs orthography. These differences are represented in Unicode by the use of different characters. They include the following.

• ࢻ [U+08BB ARABIC LETTER AFRICAN FEH] differs from ف [U+0641 ARABIC LETTER FEH] in two respects: it has no dot for the isolate and final positions, and when it does have a dot it appears below the base, eg. compareف فففࢻ ࢻࢻࢻ
• ࢼ [U+08BC ARABIC LETTER AFRICAN QAF] differs from ق [U+0642 ARABIC LETTER QAF] in the same way for isolate and final positions, eg. compareق قققࢼ ࢼࢼࢼ
• The same applies to ࢽ [U+08BD ARABIC LETTER AFRICAN NOON] and ن [U+0646 ARABIC LETTER NOON], eg. compareن نننࢽ ࢽࢽࢽ

The other two characters have a triple-dot addition which is associated with glottalised consonants in the Warsh orthography. (They don't appear to have glyphs in the webfont used.)

Consonant clusters

Consonant clusters are not particularly common, but they are written by adding a sukun over the non-final consonant sounds.

حَࢽْتَا

إِسْکَا

Consonant length

Geminated consonants are indicated using ّ   [U+0651 ARABIC SHADDA].

بَبَّ

أَدِّىࢽِى

Consonant sounds to characters

This section maps Hausa consonant sounds to common graphemes in the ajami orthography. See the notes in the section consonantSummary about variations in usage that apply here.

The right-hand column shows the various joining forms.

Click on a grapheme to find other mentions on this page (links appear at the bottom of the page). Click on the character name to see examples and for detailed descriptions of the character(s) shown.

Formatting characters

The Arabic script uses a large number of Unicode characters that affect the way that other characters are rendered. Many of those have no visible form of their own.

Modern Arabic-script text makes use of a relatively large set of invisible formatting characters, especially in plain text, many of which are used to manage text direction. For more details, see the Arabic overview.

Writing styles

The kano writing style is a common way of writing Hausa, especially in Northern Nigeria, in the ajami script, and like other East African writing it is based on Warsh (Warš) forms, which incorporate Maghribi characteristics. Text written in the Kano style will include glyphs for a number of African characters that may not be available in the average naskh font.

Another orthography, that looks much closer to naskh, is used with hand-written adaptations for the newspaper Al-Fijir, and is based on the Hafs orthography, but when writing in that orthography you need to use different code points from those used for the Kano style.

Grapheme clusters

tbd

Word boundaries

Words are separated by spaces.

Phrase & section boundaries

Hausa uses a mixture of ASCII and Arabic punctuation.

Bracketed text

Hausa commonly uses ASCII parentheses to insert parenthetical information into text.

Quotations & citations

Hausa texts typically use guillemets around quotations, but some texts may use quotation marks instead. Of course, due to keyboard design, quotations may also be surrounded by ASCII double and single quote marks. Note, however, that the order of use is different from that in LTR text, because they are not automatically mirrored.

Line breaking & hyphenation

tbd

See the Arabic overview.

Show (default) line-breaking properties for characters in the Hausa orthography described here.

Baselines, line height, etc.

tbd

Hausa ajami uses the so-called 'alphabetic' baseline, which is the same as for Latin and many other scripts.