Boko (or bookoo) is a Latin-script alphabet used to write the Hausa language. The first boko alphabet was devised by Europeans in the early 19th century,[1] and developed in the early 20th century by the British and French colonial authorities. It was made the official Hausa alphabet in 1930.[2] Since the 1950s boko has been the main alphabet for Hausa.[3] Arabic script (ajami) is now only used in Islamic schools and for Islamic literature. Since the 1980s, Nigerian boko has been based on the Pan-Nigerian alphabet.
The word boko also refers to non-Islamic (usually western) education ('yan boko = "modern school")[4] or secularism. The word is often described as being a borrowing from English book.[5] However, in 2013, leading Hausa expert Paul Newman published "The Etymology of Hausa Boko", in which he presents the view that boko is in fact a native word meaning "sham, fraud", a reference to "Western learning and writing" being seen as deceitful in comparison to traditional Quranic scholarship.[6]
There are some differences in boko used in Niger and Nigeria due to different pronunciations in the French and English languages. The letter ⟨ƴ⟩ is used only in Niger; in Nigeria it is written ⟨ʼy⟩.
Tone, vowel length, and the distinction between /r/ and /ɽ/ (which does not exist for all speakers) are not marked in writing. So, for example, /daɡa/ "from" and /daːɡaː/ "battle" are both written daga.
