Reviewed by Wolfgang Schulze, University of Munich
Paul Newman’s A Hausa-English dictionary is the long-awaited counterpart of An English-Hausa dictionary by Roxana Ma Newman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). N is one of the most renowned Hausa scholars in the world, which by itself assures the overall quality of the dictionary. The dictionary fills a major gap in Hausa linguistics: the standard sources for Hausa lexicography date back to the 1930s and late 1940s and do not meet modern standards of linguistically-oriented lexicography. Hausa is the most prominent Chadic language, spoken by roughly fifty million people in a large area that includes Niger, northern Nigeria, and southwestern Sudan. The dictionary is based upon the Standard Hausa variety of Nigeria (Kano State) but includes data from non-standard dialects cross-referenced to the corresponding entry for Standard Nigerian Hausa.
The dictionary contains more than 10,000 entries extracted from large data bases. Most importantly, the entries go beyond terms associated with the traditional conceptual world of the Hausas to reflect the full range of the languages used for modern techniques, institutions, and infrastructure.
N stresses that the user should be familiar with the fundamentals of Hausa grammar when using the dictionary. However, as he has adopted the format of a ‘grammatical dictionary’, it may be used by those lacking familiarity with Hausa grammar: the individual entries are accompanied by the morphological, syntactic, and idiomatic information necessary for understanding the word’s usage. In addition, the transcription system goes beyond the standard, somewhat defective orthography: It indicates the opposition between retroflex and trilled r and adds diacritics for tones and vowel length. High tone is left unmarked; a falling tone is marked by a circumflex accent; and low tone is shown by a grave accent. Vowel length is indicated by a macron.
The first section of the dictionary details the structure of the head entries. The target language is American English with occasional reference to British English when the entry word seems to be borrowed from this variety. Many entries are accompanied by phrasal examples that effectively illustrate the semantics and can themselves be used as samples of actual Hausa. Of special interest to linguists and language learners are the volume’s comprehensive grammatical indications: gender (m/f in the singular), derivation, plural formation, and complete grammatical information for verbs. In particular, all verbal stems are referred to by their abstract verbal base written in capital letters, followed by sub-entries for the actual verb forms, classified by grade. In this respect, N’s dictionary is also a valuable source for research in semantic shifts associated with each of the eight verbal grades. Valence is usually inferable from the English definition; when necessary, the valence is indicated in the entry. The other grammatical classes indicated are adjectives, numerals, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, determiners, particles, ideophones, and exclamations.
The format of this dictionary is very friendly to the eye, and the impressive amount of data makes it an invaluable source, not only for Hausa itself but for studies in Chadic linguistics, language typology, and semantics. It invites the reader to learn more about this fascinating language, perhaps with the help of the grammar by the same author, The Hausa language: An encyclopedic reference grammar (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).