Yau rana ta fi jiya zafi.

Today is hotter than yesterday.

Breakdown of Yau rana ta fi jiya zafi.

• yau: today
• rana: the day
• jiya: yesterday
• ta: she

Questions & Answers about Yau rana ta fi jiya zafi.

In the sentence Yau rana ta fi jiya zafi, what does ta refer to, and why isn’t it ya?

ta is the 3rd‑person singular feminine subject pronoun, and it agrees with rana ("day"), which is grammatically feminine in Hausa.
So rana ta fi … means "the day is more …".

If the subject were a masculine noun, you would use ya instead, for example:
Yau garin ya fi jiya zafi. – "Today the town is hotter than yesterday."

Why is there no word for "is" in this sentence?

Hausa often does not use a separate verb for "to be" in descriptive sentences. Here, ta fi itself functions as the verb and carries the meaning "is more than / exceeds".

Literally, Rana ta fi jiya zafi means "The day surpasses yesterday in heat", which we translate as "The day is hotter than yesterday." No extra "is" is needed.

Which word corresponds to English “than” in this sentence?

The comparative "than" idea is built into the verb fi.

The structure ta fi jiya zafi literally means:

• ta fi jiya – "it surpasses yesterday"
• zafi – "in heat / in hotness"

So instead of "hotter than yesterday", Hausa says "it surpasses yesterday in heat". There is no separate preposition like "than"; fi does that job.