Spoken Hausa By J Ronayne Cowan and Russell G. Schuh (review)

452LANGUAGE, VOLUME 53, NUMBER 2 (1977) Spoken Hausa. By J Ronayne Cowan and Russell G. Schuh. Ithaca, NY: Spoken Language Services, 1976. Pp. vi, 378. Reviewed by William E. Welmers, UCLA This is not only an excellent textbook for class use; it could also be profitably consulted by would-be authors of other language texts. It reflects, on the one hand, a genuine understanding of Hausa culture, expressed in dialogs that are interesting, imaginative, and sometimes appropriately whimsical—and, on the other hand, a system oflanguage pedagogy, classroom tested, which puts the linguistic structure of Hausa in proper perspective and gives the student every opportunity to develop a high level of competence. The authors originally planned this text for a first-year course, but have found that it can hardly be finished in one year, so that it also can be used for the first part of an intermediate course. There are twenty-five units, of which IX, XVII, and XXV are 'Drills for review'. The 'Instructions to the teacher', pp. 5-1 1, are crucially important to the effective use of this text. They include firmly restricting the use of pronunciation drills to twelve minutes at a time, and of grammatical drills to twenty minutes at a time; they stress considerably more student repetition than some teachers seem to feel is necessary; and they suggest procedures designed to keep the class hour lively and profitable. A technique of 'backward build-up' is suggested for use when a student has difficulty repeating a fairly long sentence: the last few words of the sentence should be spoken for the student to imitate, then a few more added, and so on until the student can repeat the entire sentence. This is clearly more effective than starting at the beginning of the sentence; the student's problem is finishing the sentence, not getting it started. It may be noted that, if such a drill is conducted by a native speaker of a language, he may find it difficult to break up a sentence at points that are most useful for the learner and at the same time grammatically 'natural'. Further, in some other languages (Hausa presents no particular problem in this respect), 'build-ups' may trigger alternations, particularly in tone, that may confuse the student. A conscious recognition of the structure of the language, and of problems for the learner, is essential in the instructor or instructing team. A 'Grammar' section in each unit is to be studied outside class. In a number of cases, however, important new vocabulary is introduced in such sections: numerals (after a few samples used in the dialogs of Units VI, X, XIX), days of the week, the seasons, and other convenient semantic sets. Material in some ofthe grammar sections definitely requires classroom drill. The introduction also includes an outline of the phonology, designed for the students. The discussion of vowels includes six diagrams showing articulatory positions, which hardly seem pedagogically meaningful ; C&S's descriptions of Hausa vowels seem to assume native competence in the articulation of French as well as English vowels, and no illustrative words are given for the student to hear. Illustrative words are given for tones, and for the consonants which will be easiest for speakers of English, but not for the consonants likely to be more difficult. (All these are, to be sure, well covered in the pronunciation drills in the first few units.) In the description of the Hausa glottalized /6/ and /d/, the unfortunate impression is given that ' glottalized' and 'implosive' are synonymous, or at least that implosion implies glottalization. In terms of air movement at the time ofrelease, to be sure, the Hausa sounds are implosive, and also characterized by complete glottal closure. However, the term 'implosive', when used in connection with non-Chadic African languages, generally refers to sounds that are by no means glottalized, but voiced throughout. (I would not hesitate to represent Hausa /hudu/ 'four' in, e.g., a newspaper article as hoot-do; that would be a gross misrepresentation of an implosive in numerous other languages.) Two representations of tonal downdrift, based on instrumental measurements, are given, one each for statement and question intonation. The illustrative statement is...