Loan Words in Hausa

Stark discusses a loan word situation in Hausa:

"The speaker, uncertain of how to express a complex concept in his second language, may simply use terms from his first language, trusting to context to carry sufficient meaning to the hearer. Even assuming the context is sufficient, and the hearer fully understands the concept expressed by the foreign term, he in turn must then decide how to express the concept in his first language. Using the foreign term is often seen as the surest way of getting the information right.

 

A fairly innocuous example, at least as far as theological content is concerned, can be found in the 1932 version of the Hausa Bible, where the word ‘tent’ is tent. Genesis 12:8 finds Abram on the move: ‘From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east’ (NIV). Even without any knowledge of Hausa, a reader can spot the ‘translation’ of the word tent in the following passage: Daga chan kuma ya, aura zuwa dutsen da ke gabashin Beth-el, ya kafa tent nasa, da ya tura Beth-el a yamma (1932). Due to the fact that the translators were unsure how to express the idea of tent, the term was taken directly from the first language of the translators, and continues to be read in churches today [later translations of the Hausa Bible had more indigenous options]. One is tempted to ask how it came about that in a language and culture so closely tied to the nomadic cattle-herding Fulani lifestyle, the translators could not find an indigenous term for the temporary dwelling of people as they travel with large herds of cattle, goats and sheep! Nonetheless, the point is that the chance of getting things wrong by using the wrong word is such a great risk that converts often prefer to use the exact words used by those who taught them. Thus loan words abound in recently adopted religions, and are often seen as safer than trying to express a concept in the local language, even when the borrowed term is completely void of conceptual content to the majority of the converts."

(John Stark, The Role of Oral Literature in the Dissemination of Neologisms, 12-13)