Abstract:
Language accommodation, a phenomenon in urban sociolinguistics, is the conscious
and conscientious use of other languages’ repertoire in communication. Existing
works on urban sociolinguistics, particularly in the Nigerian context, have mainly
concentrated on the endangerment of minority languages among urban inhabitants
with less attention paid to language accommodation. This study was, therefore,
designed to investigate language accommodation among Hausa immigrants in the
Gambari Quarters of Ilorin, in order to identify the patterns of linguistic relationship
between Hausa and Yoruba as well as describe the dynamics of accommodation
among the Hausa settlers.
Howard Gile’s Communication Accommodation and Masanori Higa’s Directionality
theories were adopted as the framework. The survey and ethnographic designs were
used. Respondents comprised 288 Hausa and 96 Yoruba speakers between ages 18
and 50. Language Accommodation and Linguistic Borrowing questionnaire was
administered to 384 respondents. Unstructured interviews were conducted with five
Hausa and five Yoruba informants who had lived in the community for over 40 years,
while participant observation was carried out in market, home, school, religious and
workplace domains. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics, while
qualitative data were subjected to thematic analysis.
Approximately 99.5% of Hausa immigrants in Gambari have the same proficiency in
the two languages. The mother tongue was retained in the home domain because the
parents (77.1%) spoke Hausa to their children, demonstrating language loyalty and
maintenance. In the market domain, 83.3% of the Hausa respondents used Yorùbá,
confirming solidarity. In the school domain, 90.7% of the Hausa speakers conversed
in Yorùbá with their friends and classmates. In the workplace, 95.2% of the Hausa
respondents conversed in Yorùbá, showing language accommodation in accordance
with the politics of interaction. In discussing religious matters, 64.1% of the Hausa
respondents used Yorùbá, reinforcing language adaptability. There was heavy
borrowing of Hausa words related to religion, cuisine, clothing, and animal husbandry
among others into the Yorùbá language. Linguistic phenomena including morphophonemic processes, such as consonant/vowel substitution, deletion/eletion, for
instance, were observed in many of these words. For example, the expression gánníá-fíjí (seeing is believing), was borrowed from Hausa. Borrowed Hausa words were
made to conform to the CVCV syllable structure of the Yorùbá syllable pattern
through vowel insertion. This was evident in words like lállѐ (henna), tàttàsaí
(pepper) and másállácí (mosque) which became laali (henna), tàtàsé (pepper) and
másálásí (mosque) respectively. Hausa lexical items containing glottalised
consonants, ɓ, ɗ, ƙ, were substituted with closely related sounds like b, d, k.
Language accommodation in the Gambari Quarters of Ilorin signalled harmonious coexistence among Hausa immigrants and their Yoruba hosts. This linguistic practice is
recommended for other communities with mixed ethnic groups in the country.
