# Hausa Language

> Hausa is a Chadic language of the Afro-Asiatic family, native to northern Nigeria and southern Niger and used as a trade lingua franca across West Africa. Native-speaker estimates range from roughly 53 million to 60 million, with total speakers (including second-language users) cited anywhere from 72 million to over 150 million depending on source and year.

**Category:** Languages · **Updated:** 2026-07-23 00:55:07 · **Canonical:** https://nigeriastuff.org/a/hausa-language

## Key facts
- **Family:** Afro-Asiatic > Chadic > West Chadic
- **Native speakers:** c. 53.7 million (Nigeria, 2018 est.) to c. 60 million (2019 est.)
- **Total speakers (L1+L2):** estimates range from 72 million to over 150 million
- **Core region:** Northern Nigeria and southern Niger
- **Writing systems:** Ajami (Arabic-based, c. 17th century) and Boko (Latin-based, official since 1930)
- **Status:** One of Nigeria's three major indigenous languages; West African trade lingua franca

## Sources
- Hausa language and alphabets — Omniglot (https://www.omniglot.com/writing/hausa.htm)
- Calls to use Nigerian languages at school are going unheard — The Conversation (https://theconversation.com/calls-to-use-nigerian-languages-at-school-are-going-unheard-126785)
- Hausa Language — EBSCO Research Starters (https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/language-and-linguistics/hausa-language)
- Hausa (World Languages) — MustGo.com (https://www.mustgo.com/worldlanguages/hausa/)
- Hausa (boko) orthography notes — r12a.github.io (Richard Ishida, Unicode script notes) (https://r12a.github.io/scripts/latn/ha.html)

_NigeriaStuff.org — free encyclopedic reference on Nigeria. Full article at the canonical URL above._