Hausar Masu Sayar da Motoci a Garin Sakkwato

Abstract

Car dealers (tokunbo) in Sokoto metropolis use three strategies namely, extension of meaning, coinage, and borrowing in forming their slang that makes no sense to customers. The central objective of this paper is to study and analyze the aspect of language use to ascertain the existence of this slang. This paper is a product of primary data collection through interviews and direct observation of traders’ utterances. Six various locations (shops) in the Sokoto metropolis were carefully selected and eight traders were also interviewed. The findings of this paper discovered that the traders coin new words and semantically expand some Hausa words to suit their commercial communications. The paper also revealed that traders use slang in their communications, which cannot be understood by other Hausa speakers.