Languages are very numerous in Africa, and to know them all would be a great task, but every European on the West Coast knows and makes use of the amusing native patois termed “Pigeon English,” which is the crude English that natives learn to speak who come much in contact with white men. And when one begins to form sentences in Hausa, and troubles to translate them literally into English, it is amusing what peculiar phrasing is arrived at, and how similar it is to the patois of the natives. Thus here are some literal translations of some of the Hausa sentences I used:
Interrogating native hunter.
“You, you make king of hunting in your town?”
“I make journey, I reach Aïr, after so I return within Kano when my work I finish. You agree you come far together with me?”
“Money how much you wish you do work with me moon one one?”
“You agree you do month ten (with me)?”
Consulting a chief for information of local hunting-ground and local hunter.
“I want I may collect birds and animals of bush.”
“I want I may flay them and I look inside of them.”
“I wizard am. I carry them and I show them to white men wizards in land (of) Europe.”