Hausa as a West African

Hausa as a West African Language
One of the fascinating things about Africa is the way in which
linguistic relationships often confound one's expectations. For
instance, given that most languages in West-Africa belong to the
Niger-Congo family, and given the close proximity of the Hausa to many
other Niger-Congo speakers (from whom they are often hard to
distinguish by dress or appearance), one would expect that their
language would also be of Niger-Congo origin. In fact, nothing of the
sort is true.
The real linguistic relatives of Hausa might prove surprising to those
who are unacquainted with linguistics (which I imagine would be the
case for most people) - the Semitic languages, like Amharic, Arabic,
Aramaic and Hebrew, along with several other language subfamilies like
the Berber tongues (Tuareg, Kabyla and others), the Cushitic languages
(including Somali and Oromo), and the Omotic languages (e.g. Dizi and
Gamo). All of the aforementioned languages belong to a single phylum,
called Afro-Asiatic,
and it is estimated that they began to part ways about 8,000 years ago.
As surprising as it may seem that a West-African lingua franca like
Hausa should be more closely related to the languages of the Middle
East than to its' closest neighbors, it makes sense when we consider
the history of an important geographical feature on the African
landscape, namely the Sahara desert. There is abundant evidence
indicating that the Sahara was not always the parched place it is
today, and it was in fact a fairly lush environment within the last
10,000 years, harboring a wide variety of riverine and lacustrine
resources, as well as hippopotami, crocodiles and a now extinct
relative of the zebra. Rock art to be found in some quantity throughout
the Sahara also supports this belief, depicting men engaged in hunting
of various kinds of wildlife now to be found only on the plains of East
Africa. What seems to have happened is that as the Sahara began to dry
out, it's inhabitants began to migrate either North towards the
Mediterranean, south towards the Atlantic, or east, in the direction of
the Nile, carrying with them the closely related languages they had
formerly spoken as dwellers in the Sahara region. Apart from explaining
the strange geographical distribution of the Afro-Asiatic languages at
present, this scenario might also account in part for the rise of the
Nile civilization that was to become Egypt: only wth the transition to
population-intensive, Nile-oriented agriculture imposed by
desertification could the conditions materialize that would give rise
to Egyptian culture as it has come to be known.
Another question we can ask ourselves is "Where did the Afro-Asiatic languages originate?"
Again, this is a question with a surprising and fairly definite answer.
To see how the solution arises, we take into account a method used in
biology to trace the origins of species. We begin by drawing a
dendrogram, or family tree, of the various languages in the family, and
we then ask ourselves "Where are the branches bushiest?" Of course, we
mean more by this than to ask which subfamily has the most offshoots,
for it might well be that one particular subfamily has been more fecund
than the rest, purely by an accident of history, as is true of the
Bantu languages within the Niger-Congo context. At any rate, the answer
is almost definitely as follows: all Afro-Asiatic languages can trace their common roots back to Africa, and that within the last 10,000 years.
Yes, Arabic, the language of the Quran, and Hebrew, of Biblical fame,
are of relatively recent African origin!*
The reasoning behind this conclusion is simple enough: of all the
subfamilies of Afro-Asiatic, including Chadic, Cushitic, Berber,
Semitic and Omotic, all but the Semitic languages are confined strictly
to the African continent, and even amongst the Semitic languages,
several are purely African in reach, some confined to the area around
northern Ethiopia. Ancient Egyptian, which merits a separate subfamily
all on its' own amongst the Afro-Asiatic languages, is no exception to
this pattern.
While I doubt that many of my readers will ever be interested in taking
up linguistics of their own accord, I do think the Hausa language well
worth knowing if one wishes to learn more about West African culture
and history. There is quite an extensive literature in Hausa, though
much of it is in the Arabic script that was adopted for writing the
language some centuries back (a fact that belies the often advanced
claim that writing was entirely unknown in Africa before the coming of
European colonizers.) Hausa is widely understood in countries as far
apart as Ghana, Benin, Niger and Togo. In addition, Hausa is the common
language of daily commerce throughout Northern Nigeria, and often far
better understood in the region than English, the nominal official
language.
*An answer which ought to surprise certain bigots on the right, many of
whom hold at least one of these languages in the highest esteem.