Abstract
The majority of the Hausawa are situated in the Northern Nigeria and the Southern Niger. Nevertheless, there are Hausa speakers in other parts of the world like Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Eritrea, Ghana, Sudan, and Togo among others. The global population of Hausa speakers (as L1) is estimated to be above 45 million. However, other millions of people, perhaps more than 20 million, speak the language as L2. More so, the language is believed to be fast growing. This is indeed the positive effect of the richness in its lexicon, morphology, syntax and semantics as well as the simplicity of same. Another factor that contributes to the rapid spread of Hausa is the impressive mannerism, personality and the culture of its speakers. As one of the major Nigerian indigenous languages, others being Yoruba and Igbo, it is worth preserving and documenting. This would serve as campaign towards the development of the language. However, this is in line with the phenomenon that emerged national question, thus the need to reframe national language policy in order to have one or more indigenous language(s) as the official language(s) in Nigeria. Before that could be achieved, the indigenous languages must be developed in various domains of life such as; educational, scientific, social as well as political. However, this paper delves into the global growth of Hausa and the need to preserve the language. The preservative measures for the documentation of Hausa might include; recording and mobilization among others.
Author: Sani, A-U. & Umar, M.M.
