Contrastive Analysis of Verb and Pronoun: Evidence of French and Hausa

Abstract

In essence, translation is the act of conveying a written text from one language (source language) into another (target language) without jeopardizing the meaning. However, mistranslation has become very common and problematic in the process of passing a message from one language into another especially when it involves languages belonging to different structures and systems like the Hausa and French. Many a language, unlike French, do not conjugate their verbs and have no such verb known as the auxiliary verb. There may be similarities in gender affiliations but may not accord it to objects. Pronouns may remain the same in the French language without giving much attention to tenses but differ in the Hausa language. Based on these differences and similarities, this paper critically analyses and evaluates where French and Hausa languages meet and where they differ using the theory of Robert Lado (1957) in comparing the grammar of both languages.