Hausa Alphabet & Hooked Letters

In the Nigerien boko orthography, the core letter sequence is: a b ɓ c d ɗ e f g h i j k ƙ l m n o r s t u w y ƴ z ʼ. Each hooked letter comes straight after its plain partner, so ɓ follows b, ɗ follows d, ƙ follows k and ƴ follows y, and the apostrophe-like ʼ for the glottal stop closes the list. CLDR's main Hausa exemplar lists these 26 single letters and the glottal stop, plus the digraphs sh and ts.

Q, v and x are absent from the standard lists; p is listed parenthetically in Niger and occurs in writing practices in both countries. Where English has p, Hausa usually says and writes f, so a pencil is a fensir. Two sounds are spelled with pairs of letters, sh (shekara, year) and ts (tsuntsu, bird), and many charts and dictionaries treat them as letters of their own after s and t. Rounded and palatal consonants are written with a following w or y, as in kwana (day, night's sleep), gwamna (governor) and ƙyalle (cloth). None of these pairs needs a special character, so a school chart of the Hausa alphabet a to z can be typed with the letters here.

What the hooked letters ɓ ɗ ƙ ƴ and the glottal stop ʼ do

Hausa has consonants English does not, and the hooked letters spell them. Ɓ ɓ and Ɗ ɗ are implosives: the b and d are made while the voice box drops, drawing air inward, which gives them a hollow, gulped sound. Ƙ ƙ is an ejective k, pushed out with the throat closed, which makes a sharp popping k; the ts pair is the matching ejective s sound. Ƴ ƴ is a y with a catch in the throat. The difference changes meaning: kara is a cornstalk, while ƙara means to add, or a complaint. Everyday words are full of them: ɓera (mouse), ɗaya (one), huɗu (four), ƙasa (land, country).

Nigeria and Niger spell the hooked y differently. In Niger it is written ƴ, as in ƴaƴa (children); in Nigeria the same sound is usually written as an apostrophe plus y, ʼyaʼya, and a capital starts with ʼY. Both are correct in their own country. The glottal stop inside a word is written with ʼ too: Jumaʼa (Friday), saʼa (luck; also hour). The proper character is the modifier letter apostrophe ʼ, which software treats as a letter and keeps inside the word; in everyday typing many people use the plain ' or the curly ’ instead, and readers can usually follow all three.

Hausa is a tonal language with long and short vowels, but standard spelling marks neither. Textbooks and dictionaries add tone with accents and length with doubled vowels or a macron, and their conventions differ, so everyday Hausa, from newspapers to text messages, is written without accents. Watch the look-alikes: Ɗ is not the Croatian Đ, the Icelandic Ð or the Ewe Ɖ, and Ƙ is not Latvian Ķ.

How to type Hausa letters: hooked letters, ʼ and the naira sign ₦

On a phone, add Hausa to a keyboard app that offers a Hausa layout, such as Gboard, and check that the hooked letters are on it; otherwise copy them from the grid above. On Windows, add Hausa under Settings → Time & language → Language & region to get the built-in Hausa keyboard layout, or install a free Hausa layout through Keyman.

In Microsoft Word on Windows, type the code and press Alt+X straight after it: 0253 ɓ, 0181 Ɓ, 0257 ɗ, 018A Ɗ, 0199 ƙ, 0198 Ƙ, 01B4 ƴ, 01B3 Ƴ, 02BC ʼ and 20A6 for the naira sign ₦. On a Mac, switch to the Unicode Hex Input layout and hold Option while typing the same four-digit codes.

In HTML, write ɓ ɓ, Ɓ Ɓ, ɗ ɗ, Ɗ Ɗ, ƙ ƙ, Ƙ Ƙ, ƴ ƴ, Ƴ Ƴ, ʼ ʼ and ₦ ₦. Where the naira sign cannot be typed, Nigerians often write N or NGN before the amount (N5,000), but ₦5,000 is the proper form. Niger shares the West African CFA franc with seven other West African countries; its XOF symbol is F CFA.

Where Hausa is spoken

Hausa is the great language of northern Nigeria and southern Niger. Ethnologue's 2025 estimate is 58 million first-language speakers and 36 million second-language speakers worldwide. Its heartland runs through Kano, Katsina, Zaria, Sokoto and Kaduna in Nigeria and Maradi and Zinder in Niger, and tens of millions more people across West Africa use it as a second language for trade, travel, radio and film; Kannywood, the film industry of Kano, makes its films in Hausa.

Hausa belongs to the Chadic branch of the Afroasiatic family, which makes it a distant relative of Arabic, Amharic and the Berber languages, and it is by far the most widely spoken Chadic language. For the flags, currency and emoji of its countries see the Nigeria, Niger and Ghana collections; for Nigeria's other big languages see Yoruba, Igbo and Nigerian Pidgin, and for neighbours across the region Fula and Zarma.

Hausa in Arabic script: Ajami

Hausa has been written in Ajami since at least the early 19th century; it is an Arabic-script writing tradition with variable conventions for representing Hausa sounds. Islamic scholars, poets and traders used it, and it is still read and written today in Qur'anic schools, religious poetry and some signs and letters. The Romanized orthography was standardized in Nigeria under British rule in the 1930s and a similar form was later adopted in Niger; it is used in schools, newspapers, the web and this page. For the Arabic letters themselves, see the Arabic collection.