Note 184 — Chapter III

See C. H. Robinson, Hausaland, or Fifteen Hundred Miles through the Central Soudan, 1896; Specimens of Hausa Literature, 1896; Hausa Grammar, 1897; Hausa Dictionary, 1899. Authorities are undecided whether to class Hausa with the Semitic or the Hamitic family, or in an independent group by itself, and it must be admitted that some of its features are extremely puzzling. While Sudanese Negro in phonology and perhaps in most of its word roots, it is Hamitic in its grammatical features and pronouns. But the Hamitic element is thought by experts to be as much Kushite, or even Koptic, as Libyan. "On the whole, it seems probable," says H. H. Johnston, "that the Hausa speech was shaped by a double influence: from Egypt, and Hamiticized Nubia, as well as by Libyan immigrants from across the Sahara." "A Survey of the Ethnography of Africa," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Soc. XLIII. 1913, p. 385. Cf. also Julius Lippert, "Über die Stellung der Hausasprache," Mitteilungen des Seminärs für Orientalische Sprachen, 1906. It is noteworthy that Hausa is the only language in tropical Africa which has been reduced to writing by the natives themselves.