While looking for something else, I have come across YouVersion, another website which offers a Hausa translation of the Bible. So far, this is the best online Hausa Bible site I have found! The Hausa translation is the one published by the Nigerian Bible Society in 1979, which was also used on another website I described here. The difference is the way the books and chapters are presented.
You can have two translations side by side, e.g. Hausa and English:
Two translations side by side (Screenshot by Uwe Seibert)
There is also an audio version of the New Testament, so you could listen to the text while reading it:
Written text and audio version side by side (Screenshot by Uwe Seibert)
There is also a mobile version, so you could have the bible in Hausa on your smartphone. Check it out for yourself and tell me how you like it!
Posted by hausaonline on Friday, December 23, 2011
Watching Hausa films is an entertaining way to learn the Hausa language and also get insights into the Hausa culture. More and more films – some of them with English subtitles – can be found on YouTube. I have just added a number to my Hausa films collection. a growing number of quality Hausa films can be found on the YouTube channel hausafilmstv.
Posted by hausaonline on Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Ina farin ciki — literally “I am with whiteness of belly” — is a way of saying “I am happy” in Hausa. Presently the owner of this blog is in this state in two respects: First, Hausaonline has become quite popular. Every day, several hundred visitors come and look for new Hausa videos, links, proverbs or blog posts. The highest number of hits on a single day (September 17th 2011) so far was 1,057! Secondly, it is nice to see that people have started writing more comments and giving more feedback – something every blog owner yearns for. Then, I am also happy about my new Facebook group on Hausa proverbs. It already has 84 members — mostly Hausa native speakers — and many have started posting their own proverbs. This is all very encouraging and I hope that it will contribute to the knowledge of the Hausa language and culture.
Some days ago, a reader of this blog complained that in the Hausa Bible version I had mentioned in one of the blog posts chapter 4 of the book of Malachi was missing. I checked and found that he was right. Probably the person who put that version online simply forgot to include the chapter. After all, the Bible contains many books and chapters.
In the meantime, I have come across another website where one can find a complete version of the Hausa Bible in Unicode, in common Catholic arrangement, together with some other Christian materials in Hausa and a paper on Hausa poetic meters. These materials have been put online by Dr. Joseph Kenny, O.P., a Dominican Friar, who has spent a large part of his life in Africa.
Aminus3 is a photoblog community composed of photographers from around the world. One of them is Dr. Yusuf M. Adamu, a Medical Geographer, University Professor, writer and poet from Kano. I have been following his photoblog http://hausa.aminus3.com for a while and I really love his pictures. They give a nice insight into the culture and social life of the Hausa people and could also help you learn Hausa vocabulary, as he uses Hausa words to describe his pictures. See some of his pictures for yourself:
(via Boston University) In the African Languages Proverbs Project, the Boston University African Studies Center has collected short performances by African theater troupes in their native languages. These languages include Wolof from Senegal, Hausa from Niger, Amharic from Ethiopia, Xhosa and Zulu from South Africa and Swahili from Tanzania. Each performance focuses on one of ten common proverbs and places them within a cultural and social context. These videos are designed for advanced students of the languages and are an invaluable tool for developing language proficiency and cultural competence.
The following video explains the Hausa proverb ‘In ka iya ruwa, ka iya laka?‘
SIM Nigeria is a Christian organisation working in different areas in Central and Northern Nigeria. In order to prepare their staff, they are now offering a Hausa Orientation course online. I was proud to see that my Hausa blog is mentioned in the introduction as “the place to go first” in terms of Hausa resources. I would like to return the praise: I think SIM is offering a very helpful tool, including practical language learning tips, a Hausa pronunciation guide, useful words and phrases, and many Hausa language exercises for beginners.
Five years ago, on May 20th 2006, I started this blog with a review of Philip J. Jaggar’s book Hausa. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 2001. Since then, I have published posts on many different topics related to the Hausa language and other less commonly taught languages. You can find links to all the posts in the archive.
The original idea of this blog was to help people who want to learn Hausa. It was for them (and myself) that I started collecting links to Hausa texts, video, audio, blogs and other Hausa-related websites. In the meantime, I find that many — if not most — of the people who visit this blog seem to be Hausa speakers. At least, many of the comments to the posts indicate that.
I am happy about so many people visiting this blog — sometimes more than 400 per day. Also, some of my former colleagues (I was working at a German University before) have told me that they recommend my blog to their students. That is why I try to keep it up and running, even if I don’t find too much time to come up with new language learning ideas.
Let me know if you find this blog useful for your Hausa learning. And if you have ideas you would like to share (something like this or this), you could even write a guest post yourself. Hope to hear from you!
Prof. Dr. Herrmann Jungraithmayr talking to H. E. Mai Martaba Sale Muhammadu, First Class Chief of Kaltungo (Picture taken 2009)
My former Hausa teacher, Prof. em. Dr. Herrmann Jungraithmayr, will celebrate his 80th birthday tomorrow. He was born in Eferding, Austria, on May 7th 1931. In Nigeria, where he has spent much time, people usually refer to him as “Doktor Herrmann” (it usually sounds more like “Dokta Haman”). Read the rest of this entry »
