Abstract
Speech sounds are generally divided into two, viz: consonant and vowel, the distinction being on the way they are produced or articulated in the mouth. This paper is an attempt to make a comparison between speech sounds of Hausa and Ga’anda languages. Despite that the two languages are from the same linguistic phyla. Hausa is a member of Afro-Asiatic West Chadic and Ga’anda is a member of Afro-Asiatic Central Chadic Biu-Mandara. This study would go a long way in the aspect of phonology that says in every language there is unique set of speech sounds. It is important to stress the word ‘unique’ because the set of speech sounds in one language may never be absolutely the same as in another language. This research applied both interview and observation techniquesin gathering data. This study adopts the work of Wolf (1953) on the orthography of twenty-five (25) languages widely spoken in scattered areas of Northern Nigeria as a model of operationin guiding the information collected and twenty-five informants were involved in collecting the data at the field. The findings of the research revealed that Hausa has thirty-four consonantal phonemes, while Ga’anda has thirty-two. Hausa has some consonant sounds that are not found in Ga’anda these are /b/, /ƙ/, /ƙw/, /ƙj/ /ɽ/, /ɸj/ amongst others. Ga’anda on the other hand has many phonemes which are not present in Hausa. These are /mɓ/, /nd/, /ng/, /nj/ /ngg/ /ngw/ amongst others. Moreover, there is a kind of vowel that exists in Ga’anda /ә/ which is not present in Hausa.
Keywords: Speech sounds, consonant, vowel,
mouth, Hausa and Ga’anda.
DOI: 10.36349/sojolics.2026.v02i02.042
author/Ibrahim, I. G., & Al-Musawi, I. U.
journal/Sokoto JOLICS 2(2) | August 2026 |
