Grade 5 is traditionally called the Hausa “causative,” but that label captures only part of the class. Its established members are transitive, normally have an all-high long form ending in -ar, and often present a direct result, transfer, removal, or change imposed on an object: fita “go out” gives fitar “take out,” while saya “buy” gives lexicalized sayar “sell.” A real learner’s rule must therefore combine form, valency, object frame, and the conventional meaning of each verb; the three object environments provide the necessary syntactic foundation.
All unlabelled examples are (neutral Nigerian Standard Hausa). Ordinary boko writes neither tone nor vowel length. All H below is an (academic/pedagogical) description; target examples keep normal spelling.
The morphological core: all-high -ar
The productive-looking Grade 5 long form replaces the base’s final vowel with -ar and assigns high tone throughout. With a monosyllabic base, a linking glide can occur; the resulting form must still be learned as a lexical verb. Common families include:
| Related base | Grade 5 | Established contrast |
|---|---|---|
| fita “go out” | fitar | take/remove/bring out |
| tsaya “stop, come to a halt” | tsayar | stop or bring something to a halt |
| koya “learn” | koyar | teach |
| saya “buy” | sayar | sell |
| faɗi “fall” | faɗar | drop something |
| ɓata “get lost” | ɓatar | lose, waste, squander |
Ma’aikatan sun fitar da tsofaffin kujeru daga ɗakin.
The workers took the old chairs out of the room.
’Yan sanda sun tsayar da motar a wurin bincike.
The police stopped the vehicle at the checkpoint.
Malama Zainab tana koyar da Hausa a jami’a.
Teacher Zainab teaches Hausa at a university.
Mai shagon ya sayar da janareton da ba ya amfani da shi.
The shopkeeper sold the generator that he was not using.
These are not six versions of one abstract suffix meaning “make.” Koyar is conventionally “teach,” and sayar is “sell”; speakers store those verbs as ordinary vocabulary.
From intransitive event to transitive result
The clearest causative relationship starts with an intransitive base. The base subject undergoes an event; the Grade 5 subject acts on an object and directly brings that event about.
Baƙon ya fita daga ofis da ƙarfe huɗu.
The visitor left the office at four. (intransitive fita)
Mai gadi ya fitar da baƙon daga ofis da ƙarfe huɗu.
The guard escorted the visitor out of the office at four. (transitive fitar)
Bas ɗin ya tsaya a tashar ƙarshe.
The bus stopped at the final station. (intransitive tsaya)
Direban ya tsayar da bas ɗin a tashar ƙarshe.
The driver stopped the bus at the final station. (transitive tsayar)
Here the Grade 5 member increases valency: the participant that merely went out or stopped in the base clause becomes the affected object, and a new causer/agent occupies the subject position. This is the strongest reason for the traditional term “causative.”
Transitive bases produce transfer and outward-result meanings
Grade 5 can also relate to a transitive base. Then the result is not always English “make someone verb.” Saya → sayar reverses the commercial perspective from acquiring to transferring away. Koya → koyar presents causing knowledge to be acquired and lexicalizes as “teach.” Ci → ciyar means “feed,” a transfer-of-food or cause-to-eat relation.
Aisha ta sayi keken bara.
Aisha bought the bicycle last year. (Grade 2 base)
Aisha ta sayar da keken wannan makon.
Aisha sold the bicycle this week. (Grade 5 transfer away)
Yaran suna koyon sababbin kalmomi.
The children are learning new words.
Malamin yana koyar da yaran sababbin kalmomi.
The teacher is teaching the children new words.
Jaririn ya ci tuwo kaɗan.
The baby ate a little tuwo.
Mahaifiyarsa ta ciyar da shi tuwo kaɗan.
His mother fed him a little tuwo.
The last examples also show why lexical frames matter. A Grade 5 verb can license more than one participant, but speakers do not derive every imaginable ditransitive pattern freely. Learn who is the affected object, what theme can follow, and whether da is required.
One Grade 5 verb in four environments
The long form sayar illustrates the basic object logic. Unlike a Grade 2 verb, it does not change its final vowel by tense. With a direct object, the long Grade 5 construction inserts da. With a pronoun after da, use an independent pronoun such as ita, not the ordinary direct-object form ta.
| Environment | Example | Analysis |
|---|---|---|
| no following object | Bala ya sayar. | long -ar; object understood or unspecified |
| noun direct object | Bala ya sayar da motar. | -ar da + noun |
| pronominal direct object | Bala ya sayar da ita. | -ar da + independent pronoun |
| indirect object first | Bala ya sayar masa da motar. | -ar + masa + da-theme frame |
Bala ya sayar, amma bai faɗi farashin ba.
Bala sold it, but he did not state the price. (object understood)
Bala ya sayar da motar bayan ya sayi wata.
Bala sold the car after he bought another one.
Bala ya sayar da ita ga maƙwabcinsa.
Bala sold it to his neighbor. (feminine independent pronoun after da)
Bala ya sayar masa da motar a madadinsa.
Bala sold the car for him/on his behalf. (beneficiary before the theme)
The last frame is semantically specialized and can vary with the verb and speaker; it is not a license to insert masa into every Grade 5 clause. The D-form fact is structural, while the availability of a beneficiary or recipient is lexical.
Long, short, and pre-pronoun shapes
All Grade 5 verbs have a long -ar form. A limited set also has a short form before an object, where the suffix is absent and the root is followed by da, and a pre-pronoun -she form with an ordinary direct-object pronoun. Thus tsayar da ita, tsai da ita, and tsaishe ta can all express “stop her,” but they are not interchangeable templates available to every verb.
Direban ya tsai da motar kafin mashigar gari.
The driver stopped the car before the entrance to town. (short Grade 5 form)
Jami’in ya tsaishe ta domin ya duba takardunta.
The officer stopped her so that he could inspect her documents. (pre-pronoun form)
Koyar, for example, normally uses the long construction koyar da; learners must not invent koy da or a pre-pronoun form simply by analogy. The detailed object alternatives belong to the Grade 5 object-frame system.
Verbal nouns preserve the selected Grade 5 lexeme
Grade 5 verbs normally form weak verbal nouns with -wa when no object follows: sayarwa, fitarwa, koyarwa. Before an overt object, the weak -wa is omitted and the Grade 5 stem occurs with its object construction: yana sayar da kaya, not yana sayarwa da kaya in the neutral pattern.
Kasuwar tana rufe yanzu, amma masu kaya suna ci gaba da sayarwa a waje.
The market is closing now, but the traders continue selling outside. (no following object)
Masu kaya suna sayar da kayan lambu a bakin titi.
The traders are selling vegetables by the roadside. (overt object)
Ana fitar da marasa lafiya daga ɗakin bayan an duba su.
Patients are being taken out of the room after they are examined.
The continuative does not turn sayar back into Grade 2 saya. TAM selects a verbal-noun construction; the selected lexeme remains Grade 5.
Grade 5 is not the full Hausa causative system
When the intended meaning is explicit “make/get someone do something,” Hausa also uses analytic sa “cause/put” followed by a causee and a separate clause, typically with subjunctive marking. That construction can express indirect control over almost any plausible event; Grade 5 expresses a compact, lexically conventional relation.
Malamin ya sa ɗalibai su sake rubuta aikin.
The teacher made the students rewrite the assignment.
This does not create a Grade 5 form of rubuta. It contains main verb sa, the causee ɗalibai, and subordinate su sake rubuta. English make therefore does not automatically point to Grade 5.
Practice
Identify base, Grade 5 verb, and affected object: fita → fitar da baƙo; tsaya → tsayar da mota; saya → sayar da kaya; koya → koyar da yara Hausa. Then change Bala ya sayar da motar to a feminine pronominal object (Bala ya sayar da ita) and to an understood object (Bala ya sayar). The suffix is not selected by tense in any of these sentences.
Common Mistakes
1. Adding -ar to every verb.
❌ Ana iya ƙara ar ga kowane fi’ili domin a sami causative.
Incorrect claim — only attested Grade 5 derivatives are usable, and their meanings are lexical.
✅ Tsaya yana da tabbatacciyar sigar Grade 5 tsayar.
Tsaya has the established Grade 5 form tsayar.
2. Omitting da before the long-form direct object.
❌ Mai shagon ya sayar motar.
Incorrect neutral long-form object frame.
✅ Mai shagon ya sayar da motar.
The shopkeeper sold the car.
3. Using a direct-object pronoun after da.
❌ Ya sayar da ta jiya.
Incorrect — da selects the independent feminine pronoun.
✅ Ya sayar da ita jiya.
He sold it yesterday. (feminine object)
4. Treating every Grade 5 meaning as literal external causation.
❌ Sayar koyaushe yana nufin ‘sa wani ya saya.’
Incorrect as a full lexical definition — sayar is the ordinary verb ‘sell.’
✅ Hauwa ta sayar da tsohuwar firij ɗinta.
Hauwa sold her old refrigerator.
5. Keeping -wa before an overt direct object in the continuative.
❌ Yana sayarwa da tumatir a kasuwa.
Incorrect in the neutral object-conditioned verbal-noun pattern.
✅ Yana sayar da tumatir a kasuwa.
He sells tomatoes at the market.
Key Takeaways
- Grade 5 has an all-high long form in -ar and established transitive valency.
- Its meanings include direct causation, removal, transfer, outward result, and lexicalized relations such as sayar “sell.”
- Long Grade 5 uses da before a direct object; a pronoun after da is independent: da ita.
- Short and -she forms exist only for licensed verbs and environments.
- The grade system organizes attested lexical relationships; it does not generate a predictable causative for every root.
Now practice Hausa
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning Hausa →Related Topics
- What a Hausa Verb Grade Is—and Is NotA2 — Understand Hausa verb grades as lexical morphophonological patterns shaped by meaning, valency, and the following object environment—not as tense conjugations.
- The Three Object EnvironmentsA2 — Choose Hausa verb forms by whether no object, a noun direct object, or a direct-object pronoun immediately follows, while treating indirect objects separately.
- Verbal Nouns and Grade MembershipA2 — Use Hausa verb grades to anticipate verbal-noun patterns while learning the strong, weak, and sometimes multiple forms each lexical verb actually permits.
- Grade 2 All-High -ar FormsB1 — Recognize the all-high -ar/-am form that selected Grade 2 verbs use before an indirect object, without confusing it with the Grade 5 causative.
- Independent Pronouns: Full ParadigmA1 — Learn the eight free personal-pronoun forms and distinguish them from Hausa subject–TAM, object, indirect-object, and possessive forms.
- Indirect-Object Pronouns with ma-B1 — Use Hausa mini, maka, miki, masa, mata, mana, muku, and musu for recipients, beneficiaries, and other affected participants.