Dialect Levelling in Urban Hausa: Evidence from Kano and Kaduna

Dialect levelling, the reduction of phonological and lexical differences between regional varieties of a language in urban contexts, is a well-documented sociolinguistic phenomenon in European urban language studies, but its empirical documentation in West African urban language contexts remains limited. This study investigates dialect levelling in urban Hausa, comparing phonological and lexical variation in Hausa spoken by first and second-generation urban residents in Kano and Kaduna. Sociolinguistic interview data were collected from sixty speakers in each city, stratified by generation, gender, and social class, with each speaker producing comparable speech in three contexts: formal interview, informal conversation, and reading passage. Acoustic phonetic analysis of six variable phonological features known to differ across Hausa dialects was conducted using Praat software, and lexical variation was assessed through a one hundred item dialect vocabulary checklist. Results show significant generation effects for most phonological variables in both cities, with second-generation speakers showing greater convergence toward a supralocal Hausa norm compared to first-generation migrants, consistent with levelling. The direction of levelling favours Kano Hausa phonological norms, reflecting Kano's prestige as the principal Hausa cultural and commercial centre. Gender effects are significant in Kano but not Kaduna, with Kano women showing faster levelling rates in formal speech contexts. The study contributes the first comparative empirical documentation of dialect levelling in Hausa and has implications for our understanding of urbanization and language change in West Africa. Keywords: dialect levelling, urban Hausa, sociolinguistics, Kano, Kaduna.