The Hausa spoken in Hausa films

However, apart from the anachronism and some factual errors in some health issues, another problem is the way these actors/actress speak Hausa.One such anachronism  that made  an impact on me in one film years back was  where one woman that was portrayed as uneducated and living in extreme poverty with her husband and daughter one […]

However, apart from the anachronism and some factual errors in some health issues, another problem is the way these actors/actress speak Hausa.
One such anachronism  that made  an impact on me in one film years back was  where one woman that was portrayed as uneducated and living in extreme poverty with her husband and daughter one day asked the daughter a question that did not suit the role she played.
The daughter told her that she met a man who wanted to marry her and that he was a lawyer. The mother asked, “Is he a government lawyer or does he have his own CHAMBER?” (Emphasis mine).
Nevertheless the real problem is how Hausa is spoken.  No, I am not even talking of the way it is muddled in an ‘accepted’ way because a lot of the actresses especially speak the language with total disregard to gender. But as in some places people speak Hausa like that, people find it ok, though it makes some cringe and mimic them.
What is happening is that in some films you find the actors/actresses speaking in an unnatural manner that you can never find outside their film set.
Lest I may be accused of being ‘old’ and out of tune, I watch these films with young people and even they were disgusted at the dialogue between boyfriends and girlfriends.
They go on exaggerated tirade of tiresome words that I wonder how the script writers get away with it.
For example, a boyfriend may say to his girlfriend, “You are certainly the light of my life, you are the sparkle that cools my eyes, and your stride as you walk is like that of a dove. Oh my love, you are ahead of all women, no woman can ever make me look at her.”
And a girlfriend who is angry with her boyfriend can equally say, “Please leave me alone, I don’t want to see you, don’t you dare step into this house again. You have certainly cut the veins in my heart that blood flows through. I don’t know where to put my heart now because of the pain you have inflicted on it.”
Certainly if the above scenario were to happen in real life, the Hausa people would never speak like that, as if reading from a book that  is not  itself a Hausa book or what it ought to be.
They keep on saying  that their films are depicting society, but they are found wanting in the language of their trade, if they cannot write a dialogue in the natural language of the film.
Such things put many people off our films where there are overacting, such as screaming in Nollywood and this poor presentation of Hausa language in Kannywood among many others.
Somebody once told me that he didn’t watch these films because they didn’t feel natural due to overacting.
The stakeholders in the Hausa film industry should rise up against the unnatural way Hausa is spoken in the films; because they are doing damage to the language as those that are learning would believe that is   the correct way of speaking.
Many people learning English are usually advised to listen to news read by English people or watch English films, particularly for pronunciations, but I wouldn’t advise people learning Hausa to watch our Hausa films in order to learn more.