Questions & Answers about Musa yana wurin aiki.
Yana is roughly equivalent to “he is” or “he is (in a state / doing something)”.
It is made up of ya (3rd person singular “he”) + na (a marker for ongoing or current state).
In Musa yana wurin aiki, yana links the subject Musa with the place phrase wurin aiki, giving the idea “Musa is (currently) at the workplace.”
Yes, from an English point of view it feels like “Musa, he is at work”, but in Hausa this is normal.
Hausa usually uses a pronoun + aspect marker (here: ya + na → yana) even when the subject is a full noun like Musa.
So Musa yana wurin aiki is the standard structure; you don’t drop yana just because you have Musa.
Hausa does not have a single general verb that equals English “to be”.
Instead, it uses different strategies:
- forms like yana / tana / ina etc. (for ongoing states or actions, including location),
- or just putting two elements together without a verb (for identity, e.g. Musa likita ne = “Musa is a doctor”).
In Musa yana wurin aiki, the “is” idea is carried by yana, not by a separate verb.
Literally, wurin aiki means “place of work”.
- wuri = place
- -n = a linker that means “of” or shows possession
- aiki = work
So Musa yana wurin aiki is literally “Musa is at the place of work”, which we translate naturally as “Musa is at work.”
Wuri by itself just means “place”.
When wuri is followed by another noun, it usually takes a linking -n, becoming wurin, which you can think of as “place of …”.
Examples:
- wurin aiki – place of work
- wurin wasa – place of play (playground)
So the -n links wuri to the following noun.
Yes, Musa yana aiki is correct, but it means something slightly different.
- Musa yana aiki = “Musa is working” / “Musa works” (focus on the activity of working).
- Musa yana wurin aiki = “Musa is at work / at his workplace” (focus on the location).
So yana aiki is about what he’s doing, and yana wurin aiki is about where he is.
You will hear both Musa yana wurin aiki and Musa yana a wurin aiki.
The preposition a roughly means “in/at”. With certain common location nouns (like gida “home” and wuri “place”), many speakers drop a in everyday speech.
For learning purposes, you can treat both yana wurin aiki and yana a wurin aiki as acceptable variants, with almost no difference in meaning.
No, that would be wrong in normal Hausa.
The basic order here is Subject – (pronoun+)aspect – rest of the sentence, so:
Musa (subject) – yana (he-is) – wurin aiki (place phrase).
You generally should not move yana to the end or separate it from the subject in this kind of simple sentence.
You change yana according to the subject. Using wurin aiki for all of them:
- Ina wurin aiki – I am at work.
- Kana wurin aiki – You (masc. sg.) are at work.
- Kina wurin aiki – You (fem. sg.) are at work.
- Yana wurin aiki – He is at work.
- Tana wurin aiki – She is at work.
- Muna wurin aiki – We are at work.
- Kuna wurin aiki – You (pl.) are at work.
- Suna wurin aiki – They are at work.
With a name (Musa, Aisha, etc.), you keep the same forms: Musa yana…, Aisha tana….
Most naturally, Musa yana wurin aiki means “Musa is at work right now / at this time”.
With a pure location phrase like wurin aiki, learners can treat yana as a present, current-state marker.
For more general/habitual meanings (“Musa works at a factory”), Hausa would usually include aiki as an activity or specify the workplace:
e.g. Musa yana aiki a masana’anta – “Musa works at a factory / is working at a factory.”
Yes. Since yana already contains the “he” meaning, Yana wurin aiki by itself means “He is at work”.
You include Musa only when you need to make clear who you are talking about, or when you introduce him for the first time in the conversation.