“80% of Hausa is Christian!” Fact or Folly?

“80% of Hausa is Christian!” Fact or Folly?

“80% of Hausa is Christian!” Fact or Folly?

Yesterday, I was at a tea joint (mai shayi spot) when I overheard a Fulani man confidently claiming that 80% of the Hausa language is Christian, with the remaining 20% made up of Fulfulde, Kanuri, Nupe, and English. Before I could even react, the tea seller turned and said, “Well, here’s someone who can challenge that!”

I accepted the challenge calmly and said:
“Let’s not argue blindly. Let’s bring facts.”

I started by listing five everyday Hausa words:

Then I asked him:
“Please tell us—what language were these words borrowed from?”

He quickly said, “These aren’t the kinds of words I meant.”

I turned to the people around and asked, “Are these not Hausa words?”
Everyone agreed they are.

So I said to him:
“If you can’t trace their origin, why do you confidently claim that Hausa is all borrowed? Why dismiss a language you clearly haven’t studied deeply?”

He responded, “Hausa is just built on borrowing.”
I told him:
“That’s false. Even if we count all loanwords in Hausa, they barely make up 25% of the vocabulary. And of those, nearly 15% have Afro-Asiatic connections meaning they’re not necessarily loans, but may share deeper linguistic roots.”

I went further to explain that borrowing words doesn’t make a language weak — Arabic itself has borrowed from Greek and Syriac. But Hausa doesn’t just borrow words; it adapts them and fuses them into its own grammatical and cultural framework.

Then I told him:

“The word ‘alƙalami’ may be from Christian, but Hausa reshaped it to suit our structure and tone.”

“But words like ‘cab,’ ‘tab,’ and ‘yar’ are homegrown Hausa expressions, formed from native usage, sound, and syntax not borrowed.”

That’s when he lost his cool.

He accused me of being part of some so-called “pagan revivalist agenda,” and said people like me are just trying to bring back pre-Islamic traditions.

I said to him clearly:
“Defending your native language and culture is not anti-Islam. We’re not denying religion we’re standing up for truth with knowledge.”

He got so upset that he gathered his crew and walked out of the tea joint, shouting behind him:
“All of you are unbelievers anyway!” 🤣

Key Lessons:

Knowledge beats empty claims. If you believe something, bring evidence.

Hausa is a full language with its own internal structure, not just a patchwork of borrowed words.

Borrowing vocabulary is not a weakness. Even dominant languages do it.

Cultural and linguistic pride isn’t anti-religion. It’s self-respect.