Questions & Answers about An haifi yaron a asibiti.
What does An mean here?
An is an impersonal subject marker in Hausa. It often means something like someone, people, or they when the doer is unknown, unimportant, or not stated.
So in this sentence, Hausa does not literally say the boy was born in the same way English does. It uses a structure more like:
Someone/they gave birth to the boy in the hospital.
But the natural English translation is The boy was born in the hospital.
Is this basically a passive sentence?
Yes, in meaning it works very much like a passive in English.
English says:
The boy was born in the hospital.
Hausa often uses An + verb instead of a separate passive form. So this is best understood as a passive-like or impersonal construction.
A helpful way to think of it is:
- English: passive-style meaning
- Hausa: impersonal An construction
Why is yaron after the verb if it means the boy?