MICROSOFT GEARS UP FOR HAUSA, YORUBA WINDOWS

Computer giant Microsoft is soon to enter the lab to work on Windows version for Yoruba and Hausa, two of Nigeria’s three major languages. It is part of the plans to make Windows more accessible to a growing
community of users in the country of over 130 million people.

Windows in Swahili debuted recently. Swahili is a major tongue on the south of the continent wildly spoken in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Angola, Tanzania, Kenya and other neighboring countries.

General Manager of Microsoft Nigeria Gerald Ilukwe told IT Edge that the Nigeria office of the software giant was only waiting for approval to begin work on the project. Approval should come within weeks with the launch of the Windows version in Swahili.

Over 500 language groups are identifiable in Nigeria by linguists with thousands of sub-sets of dialects in the country of about 960,000 sq kilometers, or four times the size of Britain.

But only Yoruba, Ibo and Hausa are regarded as official. Yoruba is wildly spoken in south west of the country and is immensely used with some level of alteration in Benin Republic and up to Togo.

Hausa has a wider usage in all of West Africa up to Central Africa. This underscores the popularity of the BBC Hausa radio service, which has a large pool of listeners.


 

Back To Top