Ben Zimmer in WSJ on "Boko Haram"

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

Ben Zimmer continues his  weekly very interesting Wall Street Journal column today
with an article on  the origin of "Boko" of "Boko Haram." Maybe someone can provide a link
to the article.

I'm curious about one statement though. "Hausa already had a  well established word for 'book':
'littafi' derived from Arabic."

I know no Hausa at all and minimal Arabic.  But I'm aware only of "kitab" as the Arabic word for "book."
Arabic does have an L-T-F root meaning "soft, gentle, gracious" (turns up in the female name Latifah; cf. Queen Latifa). Is that the root which provided Hausa "littafi"?

Gerald Cohen

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