TAHAMISIN WAƘAƘƘEN ƘA'IDOJIN RUBUTUN HAUSA
Na
Haruna Umar Maikwari
Da
Abu-Ubaida Sani
In the year 2004, Prof. Aliyu Muhammad Bunza
published a book Waƙaƙƙen Ƙa’idojin Rubutun Hausa (Hausa Orthography in
Verse) in which he summarises the
rules of Hausa orthography into 751 poetic verses. In page X of the book, he
calls on the attention of Hausa scholars and students that it will be of much
value if somene adds to the
original standzas, which will
allow for more examples and detailed explantions especially on the critical
Hausa orthograpic issues. This work is additional input using the same tone and
rhyme as the former verses
while technically and professionally providing more explanations and additional
examples on issues that need highlights. The work is divided into eight
chapters.
Chapter one talks about Hausa alphabet, morphemes
and word formation processes. Chapter two discusses the issues of consonants
cluster and Hausa hooked-letters. Chapter three of the book addresses syllable
structures in Hausa as well as the use of /m/ and /n/ as coda in syllables and
indicator of short possession respectively. Chapter four discusses possession,
interrogative words, indicative words, and plurals. It also talks about
concepts of ”a” and tense markers,” ”m” and pronouns,” and “plurals and pronounce.”
Chapter five treats the three major Hausa words categories: the noun, the verb, and the adjective. Chapter six covers the punctuations marks (full stop, exclamation mark, question mark, comma, semi-column, column, dash, ellipses, brackets, and quotation mark). Chapter seven treats the use of capital letter and the rules of assimilation. Chapter eight discusses the English consonant clusters and how they influence the Hausa writing system. Similarly, it explains how Arabic writing system is influencing the Hausa orthography. Finally, the chapter highlights on some works of earlier scholars on Hausa orthography and relevant topics.
0 Comments