¹ The data on which this paper is based were obtained on a field trip to Kano and vicinity in Nigeria, British West Africa, carried out as a Field Fellow of the Social Science Research Council (1938–1939), under the auspices of Northwestern University. I wish to thank Professor Leonard Bloomfield, Professor Melville J. Herskovits, and Dr. George L. Trager for their assistance in the preparation of this manuscript.

² This list represents one variety of Kano speech, that of the p-speakers. In the case of other speakers, the p and phonemes are better written as f and and the distribution of f and h before vowels differs from that of p and h among p-speakers. See section 5 below.

³ ‘b, ‘d, and ‘y are voiced implosives, answering to the description of these sounds given by J. C. Catford, On the Classification of Stop Consonants, Le Maître Phonétique 54.2–5 (1939).

⁴ In ʒ‘, g’, g^v’, and g^w’, glottal release follows oral release. ʒ’, g’, etc., seem preferable to the usual writings ts’, k’, to distinguish these sounds, which are lenes, from the fortis type found, e.g. in t’, a sound used with learned connotations by some speakers in the place of ʒ’ to represent the emphatic ṭ in Arabic loan words.

⁵ r has a single flap; r is rolled.

⁶ A. Klingenheben, Die Silbenauslautgesetze des Hausa, Zeitschrift für Eingeborenen-Sprachen 18.272–97 (1928).

⁷ G. P. Bargery, A Hausa-English Dictionary and English-Hausa Vocabulary; London, 1934.

⁸ Klingenheben 282.

⁹ I am indebted to R. C. Abraham, The Principles of Hausa 99 (Kaduna, 1934), for these examples.

¹⁰ F. W. Taylor, A Practical Hausa Grammar with Exercises, Vocabularies and Specimen Examination Papers; Oxford 1923.

¹¹ Bargery, Compiler's Introduction xxvii.

¹² Abraham 4.

¹³ Abraham 21. The tones of the enclitic words nan, čan, ne-, and če reverse that of the preceding syllable.

¹⁴ The peculiar pronunciation of these adverbs, both those of color and the semi-onomatopoetic, was noted by R. Prietze, Die spezifischen Verstärkerungsadverbien im Hausa und Kanuri, Mittheilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen 11.307–17 (1908). He describes their pronunciation in the following terms (316): ‘Sie werden gegenüber dem vorhergehenden Wort, das sie verstärken sollen, sowohl durch emphatischen Akzent (stress) als durch eine Quart höheren Ton hervorgehoben; hierbei bleibt in den beiden Silben zweisilbiger die Tonhöhe fast die nämliche.‘

¹⁵ Abraham (2) has noted that these three words are distinct in pronunciation.

¹⁶ An important reason for considering the lengthening of a short vowel in the rhetorical tone as non-phonemic is the fact that the lax quality of the short vowels is retained in spite of the lengthening.

¹⁷ A substantival word in Hausa may be defined as one that is capable of being followed by ne· or če· ‘is, are’.

¹⁸ Abraham 33–4.