On Some Loans in Fulfulde

Fulfulde with Hausa and Kanuri are the main spoken languages in West Africa. They had during many centuries so close contacts among them that they exchanged many words. Among them most of the loans in Fulfulde were from Arabic, but a relevant stock came from Hausa and some other language of the area, as well from the colonial language, i.e. English in British former colonies and French in French ones. Therefore, apart from Arabic loans which were spread from one language to another and were the objects of a few previous articles,1 it is interesting to investigate how many loans from Hausa arrived in Fulfulde. For this research Taylor’s and Noye’s dictionaries were examined, all words which could have been of Hausa origin were recorded. Taylor’s dictionary was the first one to have been explored and later Noye’s one for Fulfulde words not recorded in the previous one. Noye was writing in French, so I am quoting him in his language also respecting the Fulfulde orthography used by him, as well as that one employed for Taylor’s work.