With the largest number of speakers, spoken as a first language by about 34 million people, and as a second language by about 18 million more, an approximate total of 52 million people, Hausa makes for one of the largest spoken languages in Africa, ranking with Swahili, English, Arabic, French and Portuguese.

Hausa has between 23 and 25 consonant phonemes depending on the speaker. Hausa has glottalic consonants (implosives and ejectives) at four or five places of articulation (depending on the dialect). They require movement of the glottis during pronunciation and have a staccato sound. Hausa has 5 phonetic vowel sounds which are both single and long, giving a total of 10 vowel phonemes which are called Monophthongs and 4 joint vowel sounds that are called Diphthongs giving a total number of 14 vowel phonemes. Hausa is a tone language. Each of its five vowels a, e, i, o and u may have low tone, high tone and falling tone.