Duwai-English-Hausa Dictionary

Author: Alhaji Abba Daskum
Publisher: Yobe Languages Research Project/Ajami Press
Publication date: 2009
Number of pages: 58This is the first published dictionary of the Duwai language,1 spoken in northern Yobe State, Nigeria. The original basis for the dictionary was a collection of words assembled in 1973-75 when the editor lived in Gashua and was working as a Senior Research Fellow with the Centre for the Study of Nigerian Languages (then a research branch of Ahmadu Bello University, now part of Bayero University Kano). The original vocabulary list came mainly from work with Tizinaba Ba’askare Gangawa, with some additional words from stories. The original list was expanded through work with the late Buba Kacalla in 2007 and by Abba Daskum in 2009.
There is some dialect variation in Duwai, but the speech of the three speakers named in the first paragraph is quite similar, so the data in this dictionary should be fairly uniform dialectally.
The compilers view this as the FIRST EDITION of the dictionary.
The relatively small group of people who have assembled the information in this dictionary could not hope to fully cover the language. Users of the dictionary will find that many important words are missing, they will find errors that remain despite the best efforts of the compilers to correct them, and they will find many inadequacies and inaccuracies in both English and Hausa definitions. The compilers invite corrections, revisions, additions, and comments from the dictionary’s users, native speakers of Duwai and non-native speakers alike.