I06 Proverbs in the Hausa Language 2. THE NUMBER FORMATIOISL Hausa is an uncultivated language ; it can be, and sometimes is, written in Arabic characters, but it has no literature. It has not long passed its primitive stage, and therefore it is to primitive methods that we must turn when we study the grammatical structure. Primitive language may be said roughly to have two ways of expressing number — (a) By reduplication. (6) By the addition of some word or termination signifying mass. The so-called English, talked by natives in Nigeria, gives a clue to their idea. Ex. Boy-boy, boys. Plenty beef. Plenty man, &c., &c. An examination of Hausa shows that the number of plural forms in common use is not large; it also shows that such plural words are used in a collective sense and not with numerals to denote a particular number. Nearly all these common plurals may be shown to have been formed by reduplication, which may be assumed to have been the method by which the Hausa language first expressed its idea of number. The second method, which, subject to certain phonetic- laws, is regular, is to add aiji to the singular. Compare this to the Songhai, which adds ijo and Zaberma, which adds ijann to the singular. It is- possible that some connection may be established with yawa much. The third method, a similar one, forms the plural by
