TIMED PRACTICE · Hausa
Hausa typing speed test
Flow like a stream. Space commits a word, backspace fixes the last one. Tab or Esc restarts.
Testing your Hausa typing speed
Hausa uses the Latin alphabet you already have. The practice words here add 1 character beyond a-z — ƙ.
If you already touch type English, most of Hausa transfers on the first session. What does not transfer is the 1 character this bank reaches for beyond a-z — ƙ — and it is not decoration: leave it off and the word is misspelled. The occasional word in this bank needs at least one.
Two modes, timed and word-count, plus the option to paste your own text. The words come at random from 84 common Hausa words. What you get back is not just a number: net and raw WPM, accuracy, consistency across the run, and the keys you got wrong most often.
Speed in Hausa comes from prediction more than from finger speed: a familiar word is one motion, an unfamiliar one is a letter at a time. That is why drilling common words works — you are not training keys so much as the shapes the language keeps repeating.
The distribution is lopsided, which is the useful part. Across the 84 practice words, 23 distinct characters appear — and the single most common accounts for about 28% of every letter typed, with the top ten covering roughly 76%. Drilling the frequent ones first is where almost all of the benefit is.
- Writing system
- Latin
- Keyboard layout
- Latin QWERTY family
- Direction
- left to right
- Practice words
- 84
- Distinct characters
- 23
- Average word
- 4.3 units
Characters beyond a-z in the Hausa practice words
- ƙ2
Counted across the 84 practice words. 2% of them need at least one.
da na a ya ta ba ne ce sosai mai girma ƙaramiHooked letters, and a second script
Hausa in Latin script — Boko — uses four letters with hooks or strokes: ɓ, ɗ, ƙ and ƴ. The first three are implosive consonants, made by drawing air inward, and they contrast with plain b, d and k. They are not decorated versions of those letters; they are separate sounds and separate letters.
This is the main typing obstacle, because the hooked letters are absent from standard keyboards and are frequently replaced with the plain forms online, which loses the distinction.
Hausa is also written in Ajami, an Arabic-based script that predates the Latin orthography and remains in use particularly in religious contexts. These lessons teach Boko, which is the official standard in both Nigeria and Niger.
Questions about typing in Hausa
Do I need a Hausa keyboard?
No, though you do need the right layout selected. 1 character in the practice words here sits outside a-z, and it comes up in 2% of those words — often enough that copying it from a character map will hold you back, and rare enough that people try to.
Which Hausa keyboard layout do these tests use?
Latin QWERTY family, plus the 1 character beyond a-z that these practice words use. The 84 practice words between them use 23 of those 27, so 4 characters never come up in the practice text — these are the commonest words rather than an even sweep of the layout. The keyboard guide below the typing area shows the keys you actually press, which for an input method are the Latin ones already printed on them.
What will I actually be typing in Hausa?
84 of the most common words in Hausa, drawn at random. They use 23 distinct characters between them and average 4.3 written units each, with the longest running to about 9. Short, frequent words are used on purpose: they are the ones your hands will meet most often outside a lesson, so the practice transfers.
Is Hausa hard to type?
Only slightly, if you already touch type. 2% of the practice words need a character outside a-z, one such character appears in total, and the rest is a keyboard you already know. The difficulty is concentrated in a handful of positions rather than spread across the layout.
Why does my score change so much between attempts?
Partly the draw and partly you. No two runs of the Hausa typing test use the same words — they are sampled fresh from the bank each time, so one attempt can hand you a friendlier set than the next — and concentration varies more than most people credit. Take three and look at the middle one rather than the best.
How is typing speed measured here?
In words per minute, where a "word" is a fixed five characters rather than an actual word. That convention is what makes a WPM figure comparable between languages whose real words are very different lengths. The number reported is net WPM: uncorrected mistakes are subtracted, so it reflects text you actually produced correctly.
Why is my Hausa speed lower than my English speed?
Because you are doing two things at once: finding the key and recalling what it writes. Speed in a script you have typed for years is one motion; speed in a new one is a lookup followed by a motion. The lookup is what disappears with practice, and when it does the gap closes faster than most people expect.
Do I need an account, and is it free?
No account, no payment, no trial. Progress is stored in this browser, which is enough until you want it on a second device or on a leaderboard — that is the only thing an account buys, and it is optional.
Also in Hausa: lessons and typing games.
Other languages written in Latin: Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Javanese. Or browse all 86 by writing system.
Further reading
- Which finger types which keyThe standard finger assignment for every key on a QWERTY keyboard, why the index fingers carry two columns each, and the keys people get wrong.
- The top rowQ through P sit one row up from home, and every key there is a reach and a return. Which fingers do what, and why E and R feel different.
- How to type fasterSix changes that raise typing speed, in the order worth making them. Most people's fastest gain is not typing faster — it is stopping mistakes.