The Hausa vowels are fairly similar to certain ones in English. They are written as ‘a,’ ‘e,’ ‘i,’ ‘o,’ and ‘u,’ but, as we will see, each of those has a long and a short version. Since Hausa vowels are similar but not identical to those in English, it’s important to practice listening and mimicking actual Hausa speech, rather than simply using the English vowels.
Many Hausa consonants are similar to English ones, so in this limited introduction we’ll focus more on the ones that are rather different. See the chart below for a list of the consonants in Hausa. For a more detailed and accurate analysis, see the Wikipedia page or other sites given in the resources section.
| Sound | Comment |
| ' | glottal stop; exists in English but not written |
| b | |
| ɓ | different |
| c | English /ch/ sound |
| d | |
| ɗ | different |
| f | somewhat different; can sound like /p/ |
| g | always “hard” as in “go” |
| h | |
| j | as in “judge” |
| k | |
| ƙ | different |
| l | |
| m | |
| n | |
| r | different (flap/trill) |
| s | |
| sh | English /sh/ sound |
| t | |
| ts | different |
| w | |
| y | |
| 'y | different |
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