IN 1905, CAPTAIN G. MERRICK, R.G.A. WROTE A BOOK ABOUT HAUSA

Below are some edited excerpts from the book simply titled “Hausa Proverbs”, as published by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd. Dryden House, 43, Gerrard Street, W.
(1905) #RanarHausa #RanarHausa2020
... THREAD

1)
An oral language, Hausa abounds in proverbs and sayings, tho only few European wrote on it prior to 1905:
a. Lehrbuch der hausanischer Sprache, von A. Mischlich
b. Canon Kobinson's new Grammar
c. Haussa-Sprichworter und Haussa-Lieder, von Kudolf Prietze
d. Schon's Magana Hausa

2)
Hausa proverbs are a guide to grammar, history, and other subjects of interest, with great practical value. The manners and customs of everyday life, social conditions, the virtues most admired, the vices most despised, are shown us from the native point of view. #RanarHausa

3)
Hausa people enter into ordinary conversation to an extent of which one does not become aware of their routine of a provincial court. Many quite common expressions and allusions require some explanation before their significance is really grasped. #RanarHausa

4)
Hausa people have a very lively imagination and great intelligence. Their point of view is different to that of Europeans, and their means of comparison more limited (in the world of 19th Century). #RanarHausa

5)
Hausa was not originally a written language as it had no indigenous writing script. About 500 years ago, it began to be written in Arabic characters, and later Latin (Boko) script in colonial times. #RanarHausa

6)
In 1905, a larger percentage of Hausa men can write—horseboys, soldiers, carriers. The absence of historical Hausa Ajami texts was mainly because when asked to write, literate Hausa men will always produce a line or two of Arabic from the Quran, never Hausa. #RanarHausa

7)
A mallam will write a letter in Hausa, but, if he has any regard for his reputation for learning, he prefers to do so in Arabic, which language holds much the same position in Central Sudan now as Latin did in Europe in the Middle Ages. #RanarHausa

8)
The whole of the correspondence found in Sokoto and Kano in 1903, some 800 letters, was written in Arabic, and comprised letters from every corner of Nigeria, on all kinds of subjects, from questions of land tenure to a report on a slave raid. #RanarHausa

9)
I (Merrick) have always made a point of inquiring for Hausa manuscripts at every town visited, and have at different times received a large number of letters from natives. On three occasions only have I obtained manuscripts written in Hausa on their own initiative, by natives.

10)
One was a Hausa Ajami poem called "Waka'l Sirati" produced by an old mallam of Argungu, a place were one might expect to get a good deal of manuscript, for it has not been destroyed within the last two or three centuries, as have most other Nigerian towns. #RanarHausa

11)
The second was a letter written by a mallam of Beibei, a town in Arewa, which no mallam, who has seen it, has been able to read. The third was a letter from a horse-boy containing a complaint against a soldier, of which again no mallam could make head or tail. #RanarHausa

12)
In addition to this, I've procured from mallams a good deal of Hausa Ajami manuscript and have gone through it with them and with other mallams. While they could generally understand what they had written themselves they read other men's writing with the greatest difficulty.

13)
All, however read Arabic manuscript with some facility so that it appears to be the language rather than the letters which puzzle them. From this I infer that the only literature which Hausa possess is really oral not written, consist of proverbs, simple poems, and war songs.

14)
Many poems can hardly be understood without some knowledge of Arabic; they teem with references to Muhammad, and the prophets. They have occasionally been committed to writing. Most mallams, however, know all the well-known songs by heart. #RanarHausa

15)
For example, in the song of the mallam of the B. Gwari, which was given a mallam to read, two lines had been accidentally omitted, this did not disconcert him at all, and he inserted them as he read. #RanarHausa

16)
To test him, one or two lines were picked out at random and he was asked to read them, and though, when repeating the whole poem, he had apparently been able to do so easily, it was with the greatest difficulty that he deciphered the lines when presented to him one at a time.

17)
The war songs are very simple, and most districts have their own. The people are very fond of verbal competitions such as riddles, naming as many trees, birds, animals as possible without pausing, like English's "Peter Piper picked" Eg: Babba ba ya babba baba ba. #RanarHausa

18)
It is probably partly due to this trait in the national character that the vocabulary of the Hausa language is so much more full ("da zurufi " as Hausa say themselves) than that of its neighbours. #RanarHausa

19)
So much more expressive is Hausa, that it is no uncommon thing to find two natives of the same tribe prefer to converse together in Hausa (Kanuri, Fulani). The grammatical structure of Hausa is essentially simple. #RanarHausa

20)
The very fact that a considerable number of Hausa words are derived from Arabic, while the grammar is entirely different, tends to show that the original vocabulary was limited. #RanarHausa

21)
In the older proverbs, Arabic words are not frequent, and, on the other hand, words are used that are now seldom heard. In essence, some Hausa sayings explain themselves, and the idioms have been found generally useful and are in daily use. @RanarHausa [END]