Mun kalli rawa jiya.

yesterday

Breakdown of Mun kalli rawa jiya.

• mu: we
• kallo: to watch
• rawa: dancing; the dance

Questions & Answers about Mun kalli rawa jiya.

What does each word in Mun kalli rawa jiya mean?

A natural word-by-word breakdown is:

• Mun = we in a completed-action form
• kalli = watched / looked at
• rawa = dance / dancing
• jiya = yesterday

So the whole sentence means something like We watched dance yesterday, which in natural English is usually We watched a dance yesterday or We watched dancing yesterday.

What exactly is mun?

Mun is not just a plain subject pronoun like English we. In Hausa, it also carries information about the action being completed.

So mun means:

• we
• with a perfective/completed sense

That is why Mun kalli is understood as we watched or we have watched, depending on context. Because the sentence also has jiya (yesterday), the best English translation is the simple past: we watched.

Is kalli the verb here, and does it mean watch or look at?

Yes, kalli is the verb here.

It can mean both look at and watch, depending on context. In this sentence, because the object is (), is the most natural English choice: