Afro-Asiatic · ISO 639-3 hau · ha
Hausa Language
Hausa is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken by about 44 million people in 5 countries. It is written in the Latin script.
Where Hausa is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
About the Hausa language
Hausa is spoken by about 44 million people, which makes it the 40th most spoken language in the world — just behind Levantine Arabic (44 million) and ahead of Algerian Arabic (42 million). It belongs to the Afro-Asiatic language family and, more precisely, to the West Chadic A.1 group within the West Chadic branch.
Where is Hausa spoken?
Hausa is used in 5 countries. The largest communities live in Nigeria (31 million), Niger (11 million), Sudan (908,411), Ghana (297,466) and Cameroon (43,352).
Share of the population that speaks Hausa: Nigeria 13% (31 million), Niger 41% (11 million), Sudan 1.8% (908,411), Ghana 0.9% (297,466) and Cameroon 0.1% (43,352).
Hausa is not a national official language anywhere.
Writing system and status
Hausa is written in the Latin script. It is a safe, widely transmitted language: children still learn it at home as their first language.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Karekare.
ISO codes: ISO 639-1 ha, ISO 639-3 hau.
Frequently asked questions about Hausa
How many people speak Hausa?
Where is Hausa spoken?
What language family does Hausa belong to?
Is Hausa an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.