How To Use “The Universal Hausa Hooked-Letters”

In this write-up, you should be learning how to use the Universal Hausa Hooked-Letters as the best solution to the hooked-letter issues.

How To Use “The Universal Hausa Hooked-Letters”

Background

Hausa language orthography has some unique letters notably "The Hausa Language Hooked-Letters." The capital hooked-letters are "Ƙ", "Ɗ", and "Ɓ" while the small ones are "ƙ", ’ɗ", and "ɓ". For the fact that English keyboards do not provide for such hooked-letters, there comes the need to improvise. There have been efforts, consequently, to come up with alternative ways. Some of the efforts are successful.

The most popular options are Rabi'at in which the fonts are installed in a system as "fonts style." If Rabi'at fonts are installed and selected as font style, automatically:

i. "X" is "Ɗ"

ii. "Q" is "Ƙ"

iii. "V" is "Ɓ"

(The same with lower case).

For Abdalla:

i. "SHIFT + {" is "Ƙ"

ii. "SHIFT + }" is "ƙ"

iii. "SHIFT + [" is "Ɗ"

iv. "SHIFT + ]" is "ɗ"

v. "SHIFT + |" is "Ɓ"

vi. "SHIFT + ~" is "ɓ"

Shortcomings

i. The letters are only recognized if a system has the fonts installed.

ii. A typist must be switching from one fonts style to another if the text involves Hausa, English and special characters.

The Development

It is fortunate enough that the latest development provided by Microsoft  has come with the best solution to the problem. It has introduced such characters which are names, locally however, "Universal Hausa-Hooked Letters." To use the new development, follow the procedures below:

i. Go to "Control Panel"

ii. Open "Language Region" (Use the search function to locate it as indicated in the photo below)

iii. Locate a list of languages

iv. From the list of languages, select "Hausa (Latin-Nigeria)

NOTE: Hausa available there include "Hausa "Latin-Nigeria", "Hausa (Latin-Niger)", and "Hausa (Latin-Ghana)"

v. Save it.

DONE!

Using The Universal Hausa-Hooked Letters

i. When you open any Microsoft file, locate "ENG" from your "taskbar" (either at the top, bottom or side, depending on where you set the taskbar).

ii. Click on the "ENG" and you will find this:

HAU Hausa (Latin)

Hausa Keyboard

iii. Click on it

iv. The initial "ENG" will now turn to "HAU"

You are good to go!

In the file, type hooked-letters using:

i. ALT GR + K as "Ƙ"

ii. ALT GR + X as "Ɗ"

iii. ALT GR + V as "Ɓ"

The same with the lower case:

i. alt gr + k as "ƙ"

ii. alt gr + x as "ɗ"

iii. alt gr + v as "ɓ"

If you have any question, feel free to ask in the comment section below.