Breakdown of Aisha tana so ta yi barci da dare, amma kullum tana aiki.
Questions & Answers about Aisha tana so ta yi barci da dare, amma kullum tana aiki.
In Aisha tana so ta yi barci da dare, the word tana is made of:
- ta- = 3rd person singular feminine subject marker (she)
- -na = progressive / continuous aspect marker (roughly “is/does (regularly)”)
So tana ≈ “she is / she (usually)”.
Hausa verbs normally must have this kind of subject marker attached, even if the subject noun (like Aisha) is also present. The pattern is:
- Aisha tana so… = Aisha, she wants…
You cannot drop tana and say just Aisha so ta yi barci – that would be ungrammatical. The name gives you the full noun subject, and the ta- marker on tana is grammatical agreement with that subject.
In Hausa, after a verb like so (to want/like), the following verb usually appears in a subjunctive form, which in the 3rd person feminine is ta yi.
- tana so = “she wants / she likes”
- ta yi barci = “that she sleep” / “to sleep”
Putting them together:
- tana so ta yi barci = “she wants to sleep / she likes to sleep”
If you said tana so tana barci, it would sound like “she wants, she is sleeping” – two separate statements – and it would not mean “wants to sleep.” The ta yi form is the correct way to express the “to do X” clause after so.
Both are related to “want/like/love,” but their use depends on grammar:
so is the basic verb root:
- Ina so. = I want / I like (it).
son is the verbal noun (like “wanting/loving”) and often appears with a possessive pronoun:
- Ina son shi. = I love him / I like it. (literally: I am in love-of him.)
- Tana son yin barci. = She wants to sleep. (literally: She is in wanting of doing sleep.)
In your sentence, tana so ta yi barci uses the finite verb so plus a clause ta yi barci.
You could also say:
- Aisha tana son yin barci da dare, amma kullum tana aiki.
This is grammatically fine and very natural; it just uses the verbal noun pattern instead of the subjunctive clause pattern. Both are common.
In Hausa, many actions are expressed with yi (“do/make”) plus a noun. Barci is literally “sleep” (as a noun), and yi barci is “to sleep” (do sleep).
- yi = “do”
- barci = “sleep” (noun)
- yi barci = “to sleep” (verb phrase “do sleep”)
So:
- ta yi barci = “(that) she sleep” / “for her to sleep”
This “light verb” yi is used in many similar expressions:
- yi aiki = do work → to work
- yi wanka = do bath → to bathe
- yi addu’a = do prayer → to pray
You can’t normally just use barci alone as the verb in this kind of pattern; yi is doing the verbal work.
Da is quite flexible in Hausa. Common meanings include:
- and
- with
- “at/during” (for some time expressions)
In da dare, da is marking a time phrase, so the whole expression means “at night” / “in the night.” It does not mean “and night” here.
Other time expressions with da:
- da safe = in the morning
- da rana = in the afternoon / daytime
- da yamma = in the evening
So ta yi barci da dare literally feels like “she sleep do at night.”
Tana aiki is the progressive/imperfective form of the verb phrase yi aiki (“to work”). By itself, tana aiki can mean:
- “she is working” (right now), or
- “she works / she does work” (regularly / habitually)
The exact nuance depends on context.
In your sentence, we have kullum tana aiki:
- kullum = always / every day
- tana aiki = she is working / she works
Together this clearly gives a habitual meaning:
- amma kullum tana aiki = but she is always working / but every day she works.
So here it’s understood as a repeated or constant situation, not just “right now.”
Kullum means “always” or “every day.” In many contexts the two meanings overlap, so one English translation often covers both.
Common positions:
- Kullum tana aiki. = She always works / Every day she works.
- Tana aiki kullum. = She works all the time. (very similar)
- Amma kullum tana aiki. = But she is always working / But every day she works.
In your sentence, amma kullum tana aiki is perfectly natural. You could also say:
- amma tana aiki kullum
The meaning is basically the same; kullum can go before or after the verb phrase, though before the verb is especially common for “always.”
There are a few different structures here, each with its own nuance:
tana so ta yi barci
- tana so = she wants / she likes
- ta yi barci = that she sleep
→ “she wants to sleep / she likes to sleep”
This uses so- subjunctive clause, which is very standard.
tana son yin barci
- tana son = she is in wanting of
- yin barci = doing of sleep (verbal noun)
→ also “she wants to sleep”
This is a slightly more noun-like construction, also completely natural.
tana barci
- This means “she is sleeping” (right now), a direct present/progressive meaning.
It doesn’t express “wanting to sleep”; it expresses actually being asleep.
- This means “she is sleeping” (right now), a direct present/progressive meaning.
So in your sentence, to express the idea “she wants to sleep”, tana so ta yi barci (or tana son yin barci) is correct; tana barci would change the meaning to “she is sleeping.”
For a masculine subject, Hausa uses ya instead of ta. So:
Feminine (Aisha):
Aisha tana so ta yi barci da dare, amma kullum tana aiki.Masculine (e.g. Ahmed):
Ahmed yana so ya yi barci da dare, amma kullum yana aiki.
Changes:
- tana → yana (she is → he is)
- ta yi → ya yi (that she do → that he do)
- final tana aiki → yana aiki
The structure is the same; only the gender agreement markers (ta-/ya-) change.
Amma means “but” in Hausa and works very much like English “but” joining two clauses:
- Aisha tana so ta yi barci da dare, amma kullum tana aiki.
= Aisha wants to sleep at night, but she is always working.
Normally, amma introduces the second clause, just as “but” does in English. You would not usually put it at the end of the first clause.
Other examples:
- Ina so in tafi, amma ban da lokaci.
I want to go, but I don’t have time.
So the position of amma in your sentence is normal and correct.