A Focus on Some Phonological Assimilation of English and French Loanwords into Hausa

: The present research aims to examine a comparative phonological study of English and French loanwords into Hausa as spoken in Nigeria and Niger Republic respectively. The main objective of the research is to identify and analyze the lexical differences of the two linguistic communities at phonological point of view. The study is going to cover two important areas that will represent other Hausa speaking areas, one in Nigeria and the other Niger. In southern Niger (Maradi and Damagaran) the largest cities with massive Hausa speakers in the country will be selected. In Nigeria, Kano city will be selected being the largest Hausa city with several Hausa speakers and the Kano Hausa is the closest dialect of standard Hausa. In collection of the data, various written materials available Bookshops and online materials will be referred to; Besides, two research assistants will be co-opted to assist in collecting a proportion of some lexical items within geographical areas from both Kano, Maradi and Damagaran. An observation and interview research methods will also be used in collecting the data, as the research deals with spoken Hausa. The anticipated findings of the research will be identifying Certain English and French Phonemes with their closest phonemes inventory of the first language (Hausa). Also, to identify some of the principles of Hausa language that play great roles in the phenomena of foreign lexicon thereby making the incoming loanwords looks and sound like the native Hausa words.


INTRODUCTION
Every language has varieties of speech that show some degree of correlation with the social and geographical structure of the society.It is also obvious that every natural language has an independent phonological system reflecting the different types of sounds that it happens to have.If a language is spoken by thousands or millions of people, variation of usage manifests in terms of phonetics, phonology, syntax, morphology, semantics etc.In the present work, some lexical items from standard Hausa and some regional dialects under study will be examined with the aim of finding out phonemes that undergo changes in certain environments toward the realization of phonemic merger in Hausa.Phonologically, a lexical item is represented as a linear sequence of segments, each segment is specified with respect to distinctive phonological information.In this work, we shall examine how phonological processes relate underlying forms with their phonetic representations; however, some phonological changes are automatic ones while some are nonautomatic.This research is directly on a comparative phonological study of English and French loanwords adopted into Hausa.The language of Hausa is one the widely spoken indigenous languages in Sub-Sahara Africa, used as a first language by over forty-one (41) million people in its "central" area covering most of the Northern part of Nigeria and Southern part of Niger.It also, serves as lingua-franca, in most West African countries and within certain settler clusters in parts of North and Central Africa.Phonological processes are a systematic alternations or changes that sounds undergo depending on their positions in words or across word boundaries.Yul-Ifode (2014) asserts that "phonological processes are those changes which segments undergo that result in the various phonetic realizations of underlying phonological segments".Phonological processes refer to a situation where segments of neighboring morphemes that becomes juxtaposed undergo change when they are combine to form words or other than those in which two morphemes come together (Schane, 1973).These processes are governed by phonological rules which generalization about the different ways a sound can be pronounced in different environments.(Hayes, 2009).Goldsmith (1995) explores phonological rules as "the devices employed by the phonological theory to account for the relationship between representations at different levels".Additionally, phonological rules could be described as a mapping between underlying level and surface level of phonological representation.According to Sani (1989), phoneme is an abstract unit of distinctive/contrastive sound in a language.However, there are forty-seven (47) phonemes in Hausa, comprising thirtyfour (34) consonants and thirteen (13) vowels, the English phonemes are forty-two (42) comprising twenty-four (24) consonant and eighteen (18) vowels, while French phonemes are fifteen (15), ten consonant phonemes and five vowels.The Hausa consonants are succinctly described by Sani (2005) "as a speech sounds which are produced with the obstruction of airstream, the obstruction could be partial or total".More so, in the articulation of consonants sounds, three things are always put into consideration, thus, place of articulation, manner of articulation and state of the glottis.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Phonology as a core area of Linguistics has a keen interest by many scholars which triggered a lot of scholarly researches in Hausa language.These researches were contributions made by some of the Hausa scholars in relation to automatic and non-automatic phonological changes in Hausa.The most famous among them are the works of Ibrahim (1978), Yalwa (1994), Zaria (1982), Abubakar (1983), Bagari (1983/85), Bello (1985), Sani (2001) and Baba (1993/1998). Zaria (1982) puts emphasis on sound correspondences, distinguishing one dialect from another; Abubakar (1983) discusses dialectal variations from phonological perspective; Bagari (1983Bagari ( /1985) ) examines pvcs that end in long vowel /o:/ in syllable final position of Hausa common nouns; Bello (1985) investigates merger in relation to English loanwords in Hausa and cited examples on how the sounds of certain English loanwords merged with Hausa sounds; Sani (2001) studies the behavior of back consonants /k/ // and /g/ in relation to vowel alternation; Baba(1993Baba( /1998) ) examines pluractional verb forms where he touched on two variants of prefixal reduplication when forming pluractionals in Hausa.The focus of Yalwa (1994) was on Arabic loanwords into Hausa language, while Ibrahim (1978) main attention was on comparative analysis Azben, Fulfulde, Kanuri, Nufe and Yoruba loanwords into Hausa.

METHODOLOGY
The present research is designed to be qualitative and descriptive in nature.Yule ( 2006) asserts that "qualitative research is a type of research that describes a phenomenon in words instead of number or measure".In qualitative-based research, data are often collected through interviews, observations, and focus groups, within the analysis indentifying patterns across cases to provide a descriptive of this pattern (Milerday & Micheller 2004:17).

Area of Study
As stated earlier that, this research will investigate assimilation of English and French loanwords into Hausa.The area of study for this research will be Nigeria and Niger (Kano, Maradi and Damagaran).The selection is to represent other Hausa speaking areas in southern Niger refer to Hausa land and northern Nigeria.

Informants
This research purely concern with the spoken language of two distinct communities speaking Hausa.The best data gathering technique in conducting a research of this nature is for the researcher to meet his informants from whom he would get the relevant data.In this regard, a substantial number of Hausa speakers from the area of the study mentioned above will be met and interacted and their normal and natural speech habits will be carefully examined in the course of obtaining the data needed for English-French loanwords into Hausa.Besides, the two nominated selected research assistants will be involved in the selection of the informants to be interviewed.The informants will be from different categories based on age, sex as well as educational background (Islamic and Western education).

Data Collection Procedures
An interview, observations, focus groups and native speaker's intuition will be procedures for the data collection of this research.Additionally, this research will partially rely on a handful of essential books, especially dictionaries of English-Hausa and French-Hausa and other various relevant materials written by some of the eminent scholars mentioned in the literature section.In the course of data collection, interview in this type of research that concerns speech is inevitable.Hence, the researchers will interview different Hausa speakers at the areas of the research mentioned above with the aim of examining assimilation of English and French phonemes into Hausa.

Method of Data Analysis
The method of the data analysis for this research will be based on the generative phonological theory.Generative phonology deals with the task of establishing the set of distinctive features and the properties of phonological rules of world languages.According to Schane (1973) "distinctive features are minimal elements" while Stampe (1973) asserts it as "the ad hoc abbreviations of features bundles that can take one of the values: +(plus) or -(minus)".However, the selection to adopt this theory is reasonably based on its ability to address critically the analysis of assimilation of English and French loanwords into Hausa.

Data Presentation and Analysis
This section presented the interpretation and analysis of the data extracted from handful of essential books, especially dictionaries of English-Hausa French Hausa and other various relevant materials written by some of the eminent scholars mentioned in the literature section.The data discovered five phonological processes that motivate assimilation of English and French loanwords into Hausa.The identified phonological processes are: Labialization, Palatalization, Nasalization, Truncation and Metathesis.

LABIALIZATION
This is the super-imposition of labial articulation on a non-labial sound.In short, it is a secondary articulation whereby lip rounding is added to a sound."Anysimple velar consonant in Hausa, that immediately comes before a back vowel is, by implication, a labialized one".Sani (1989;30).Some examples were cited for illustrations below: saqwan (the message) roqo (pleading) roqwan (the pleading) tarko (a trap) tarkwan (the trap) rago (a ram) ragwan (the ram) The velars in the words under set (a) are simple velars, but they are labialized ones, though the labialization appears in the pronunciation of the words under set (b), to that effect the actual representation of the words under set (a) is saqwo, roqwo, tarkwo and ragwo respectively, (cf.Sani;1989;30).
In the light of the above, the loanwords from English and French that have plain/ In Hausa spoken in Southern Niger also, the French loanword "goyave" meaning "guava" is pronounced as 'gwaibàa'.The rule for this phenomena is the same with the one overleaf.Sani (1989)  Pertaining the French loanword 'monsieur' into Hausa spoken in Southern Niger, the word is pronounced as /mùushe/ referring to mister or teacher, the sound /s/ in the foreign lexicon is palatalized because it is followed by the front vowel /i/, to that effect it becomes /sh/.

NASALIZATION
Nasalization is the super-imposition of nasal articulation on a non-nasal sound.This is a situation where oral sound turns into nasal, which is normally determined by the context.Nasal vowel is inherent, Hausa language has no single nasal vowel unless it is dictated by the context.In borrowed lexical items from the two foreign languages in question, several vowels are nasalized.
The nasalization process occurs in two or three conditions, the first condition is where the first consonant turns the vowel into nasal, example:

CONCLUSION
Word is one of the basic units of meaning and the medium through which human beings exchange ideas, concepts, feelings, sentiments and so on.This of course illustrates the great power that word wields in the affairs of men in different societies.Thus, this study decided to dwell on the incoming loanwords from the two distinct colonial languages into Hausa language spoken in different linguistic communities viz, Northern Nigeria and Southern Niger.In this discussion, we have seen that absorption of borrowed lexical items into Hausa started with the phonetic representation of the borrowed words.Indeed, applying phonological rules in the lexical items of English and French has certain desirable consequences in the receptor language (Hausa) as this process, simplify pronunciation of the foreign loanwords to Hausa speakers and at the same time, assist the Hausa native speaker who is learning one of the two languages under study, to avoid first language phonetic interference.
defined palatalization as "the addition of a palatal articulation to a non-palatal consonant under certain conditions."Thecondition governing such palatalization is where the front vowel /!/ or /e/ immediately follows certain consonants (alveolar and velar).Whenever English and French loanwords in Hausa have the velars /k/ and /g/, they are automatically palatalized provided they are immediately followed by front vowels /i/ and /e/ but palatalization of alveolar is not automatic.See some examples overleaf.The palatalization of alveolar /s/ in borrowed words from English and French which is not automatic like that of velars, is shown where /s/ becomes /sh/ before the front vowels /i/ or /e/, see examples below: The third condition in the process of nasalization is where both consonants of the syllable determine the nasalization of the oral sound (vowel) into nasal.In short this involves the first and the second conditions discussed in page 37 and 38.See some few examples below: -This is a process in which a word of two or more syllables is reduced to a shorter form without altering its function, often in casual speech to indicate an attitude of familiarity, by the user, to the object being denoted or the audience being addressed.Reducing a word to a shorter form is among the frequent linguistic changes.Hausa employs truncation as a means of adjusting some English and French loanwords thereby omitting some parts of the incoming words, thus-The introduction of foreign words may, however, at least temporarily "and in the speech of a restricted number of individuals, disturb the number of phonemes or their distribution as regards position in the word".Gimson (1980).Hausa speakers in both Northern Nigeria and Southern Niger Republics tend to disturb the distribution of some phonemes in the borrowed lexical items of English and French, though in case of metathesis, the meaning of the word doesn't change, just like I said earlier, the speakers of the target language sometimes apply certain sound changes by way of combining native linguistic elements on the foreign model.Examples: ://bjmas.org/index.php/bjmas/indexPublished by the European Centre for Research Training and Development UK 10 METATHESISMetathesis is a process in which two speech sounds change position in a word without affecting the meaning of that particular word.Metathesis is of two types, there is the consonantal metathesis 'https