Learn Hardcore Hausa: Babur ya dawo daga gari da wuri yau. - The motorbike came back from town early today.

ya here is the 3rd person singular masculine perfective verbal pronoun.
It marks both who did the action (he/it) and the aspect/tense (completed action).

So:

Babur ya dawo… = literally “Babur, he-returned…”
Saying *Babur dawo… is ungrammatical in standard Hausa.

You can either have:

Ya dawo daga gari da wuri yau. – “He came back from town early today.” (subject only as pronoun), or
Babur ya dawo daga gari da wuri yau. – “Babur came back from town early today.” (noun + matching pronoun)

But you cannot drop ya in this structure.

Is Babur a person’s name here, or does it mean “motorbike”?

It can be either, depending on context:

Common noun:
- babur (usually written with a small b in running text) means “motorbike / motorcycle”.
- Grammatical gender: masculine, so it takes ya (3rd person masculine).
Personal name:
- Babur can also be a male name (especially influenced by Islamic or historical names).
- As a name, it’s capitalized, and also uses ya because it’s a male person.

The sentence structure fits both:

“The motorbike came back from town early today.”
“Babur (the man) came back from town early today.”

Only context would tell you which one is meant.

What exactly does ya dawo mean in terms of tense and aspect? Is it just a simple past like “came back”?

ya dawo is in the perfective aspect for 3rd person masculine:

Aspect: perfective (the action is viewed as complete).
Time: usually past in this kind of sentence, but in Hausa it’s more about completed vs. ongoing than about strict past vs. present.

Common English equivalents for ya dawo are:

“he came back”
“he has come back” (depending on context)
“he’s back” (if you’re focusing on the result)

If you wanted:

ongoing / progressive:
- yana dawowa – “he is coming back”
future:
- zai dawo – “he will come back / is going to come back”

What does daga gari mean exactly, and why do we use daga here?

daga gari breaks down as:

daga – a preposition meaning “from” (source of motion).
gari – “town”, “village”, sometimes “city” (depending on context).

So daga gari = “from (the) town”.

We use daga with verbs of movement like dawo (come back), zo (come), taho (come, arrive), etc., when we want to indicate the starting point:

ya dawo daga gari – “he came back from town”
ya tafi gari – “he went to town” (here we’d normally use just the bare noun or zuwa gari)

daga ≈ English “from” (source), while zuwa ≈ “to” (destination).

I learned wuri means “place”. How does da wuri end up meaning “early”?

You’re right that wuri by itself commonly means “place / spot / space”.

However, da wuri is an idiomatic expression meaning “early” (in time), not “with a place”.

da here functions in a fixed phrase, not as a simple “with/and”.
So da wuri is best learned as a set adverbial expression = “early”.

Examples:

Na tashi da wuri. – “I woke up early.”
Ka iso da wuri. – “You arrived early.”

There’s no natural, literal “with place” meaning in normal usage; treat da wuri as one chunk.

Can I move yau (“today”) or da wuri (“early”) to other positions in the sentence?

Yes, Hausa allows some flexibility in the placement of time and manner expressions like yau and da wuri, though the focus/emphasis can shift slightly.

All of these are acceptable:

Babur ya dawo daga gari da wuri yau.
Babur ya dawo daga gari yau da wuri.
Yau Babur ya dawo daga gari da wuri.
Da wuri Babur ya dawo daga gari yau. (more marked/emphatic on “early”)

General tendencies:

yau (today) often goes at the end or beginning.
da wuri (early) usually stays close to the verb phrase, often just before or after the place expression.

Native speakers may prefer certain orders depending on rhythm and emphasis, but more than one order is correct.

If Babur is an object (like a motorbike), why do we still use ya, which I learned as “he”?

In Hausa, grammatical gender applies to nouns (including inanimate ones), not just to people:

babur (motorbike) is classified as masculine.
The corresponding 3rd person singular masculine verbal pronoun is ya.

So:

babur → ya (not ta)
mota (car, feminine) → ta

Examples:

Babur ya tsaya. – “The motorbike stopped.”
Mota ta tsaya. – “The car stopped.”

Even though English doesn’t usually say “he” for objects, Hausa must mark the grammatical gender with ya or ta.

How would I say the same idea in the negative, like “Babur did not come back from town early today”?

To make ya dawo negative in Hausa perfective, you use bai … ba around the verb:

Babur bai dawo daga gari da wuri yau ba.

Breakdown:

Babur – subject
bai – negative perfective (3rd person masc.)
dawo – return
daga gari – from town
da wuri – early
yau – today
ba – closing negative particle

So the pattern is:
[Subject] + bai + [verb] + (other elements) + ba.

How would I turn this sentence into a yes–no question in Hausa?

Spoken Hausa can form a simple yes–no question just by using questioning intonation, without changing the word order:

Babur ya dawo daga gari da wuri yau?
(Said with rising intonation.)

You can also add ne at the end for emphasis or clarity, especially in some dialects:

Babur ya dawo daga gari da wuri yau ne?

Both are understood as: “Did Babur come back from town early today?”

Answers are typically:

Eh, I, or E – “Yes”
A’a – “No”

What’s the difference between dawo and verbs like komo or koma? Could I use them here?

All three relate to “coming/going back”, but with different shades:

dawo – to come back (here), return to the speaker’s or home base location.
koma / komo – to return / go back (often with less focus on “towards the speaker”, more on “back to a previous place/state”).

In many contexts, for physical movement, dawo and komo/koma may overlap, but in your sentence:

Babur ya dawo daga gari da wuri yau. – very natural.
Babur ya komo daga gari da wuri yau. – can be understood, but dawo is more typical for “he came back (home) from town”.

For a learner, dawo is the safest and most common choice for “come back / return (to here)”.

Hausa doesn’t seem to use words like “the” or “a” in daga gari. How do I know if it means “from town” or “from the town”?

Hausa does not have articles like English “a/an” and “the”.

gari by itself can be translated as “a town”, “the town”, or even just “town”, depending on context.
daga gari = “from town / from the town”.

Definiteness is shown by:

Context (what has already been mentioned),
Possessive or demonstratives:
- daga garin nan – “from this town”
- daga garinmu – “from our town”
- daga wani gari – “from some town / from a certain town”

So in your sentence, daga gari is neutral; English must choose “from town” or “from the town” based on the situation, but Hausa itself doesn’t mark that difference here.