Breakdown of ’Yar uwata wadda ta ci nama yanzu tana jin daɗi.
Questions & Answers about ’Yar uwata wadda ta ci nama yanzu tana jin daɗi.
Literally, ’yar means daughter, and uwa means mother.
- uwa = mother
- uwa + -ta = uwata = my mother (the suffix -ta is “my” here)
- ’yar uwata = daughter of my mother
In Hausa, “daughter of my mother” is the normal way to say my sister (specifically a female sibling). So:
- ’yar uwata = my (female) sibling → my sister
The mark ’ in ’Yar is a glottal stop sign in Hausa spelling. It shows that the word begins with a glottal stop sound, a brief closure in the throat, a bit like the break in the middle of uh-oh in English.
So ’yar is not exactly the same as just yar; it begins with that slight catch in the throat. Many learners don’t strongly pronounce it at first, but it’s part of standard Hausa orthography.
It’s capitalized because it is the first word of the sentence:
- ’Yar uwata wadda ta ci nama yanzu tana jin daɗi.
In the middle of a sentence you would usually see it as ’yar, with a lowercase y:
- Na ga ’yar uwata. – I saw my sister.
uwa = mother
Hausa adds possessive suffixes directly to some nouns, including uwa.
- uwa + -ta → uwata = my mother
(Here -ta is the first person singular possessive “my”.)
Other examples of this pattern:
- uwarka – your (m.sg.) mother
- uwarki – your (f.sg.) mother
- uwarsa – his mother
- uwarta – her mother
So ’yar uwata is literally daughter-of my-mother, which idiomatically = my sister.
wadda is a relative pronoun, meaning who / that / which for feminine singular nouns.
The structure is:
- ’Yar uwata – my sister (feminine)
- wadda ta ci nama – who ate meat
So:
- ’Yar uwata wadda ta ci nama…
= My sister who ate meat…
Because ’yar uwata is grammatically feminine, Hausa must use the feminine relative pronoun wadda, not the masculine wanda.
wanda is the masculine singular relative pronoun (who / that for a masculine noun).
wadda is the feminine singular relative pronoun.
- yaro wanda ya ci nama – the boy who ate meat (masc.)
- ’yar uwata wadda ta ci nama – my sister who ate meat (fem.)
Since ’yar uwata is female, Hausa grammar requires wadda to match that feminine gender.
ta is the 3rd person feminine singular subject marker on the verb:
- ta ci → she ate / she has eaten
- ci is the verb to eat.
So:
- ta ci nama = she ate meat or she has eaten meat.
It agrees with the feminine subject ’yar uwata (my sister).
ta ci is in the perfect (completed) aspect. In English it can correspond either to:
- Simple past: she ate meat, or
- Present perfect: she has eaten meat.
The exact English translation depends on context and adverbs like yanzu (now). In this sentence, with yanzu, we might translate the whole clause as:
- My sister who has eaten meat is feeling good now.
nama means meat in general (usually animal flesh used as food). So:
- ta ci nama = she ate meat.
If you wanted to be more specific, you could say things like:
- nama shanu – beef
- nama kaji – chicken
But nama alone just means meat.
Hausa has flexible placement for time adverbs like yanzu. You can put it:
- At the start: Yanzu ’yar uwata wadda ta ci nama tana jin daɗi.
- Between clauses: ’Yar uwata wadda ta ci nama yanzu tana jin daɗi.
Both are grammatical. In this sentence, yanzu is placed after the relative clause wadda ta ci nama and before the main clause tana jin daɗi, so it naturally associates with is feeling good now:
- My sister who ate meat is now feeling good.
tana is the 3rd person feminine singular imperfective/progressive form of na:
- ta – she (subject marker, perfect / plain)
- tana – she is (doing…) – progressive/continuous
So:
- tana jin daɗi literally: she is feeling pleasure / she is enjoying / she feels good.
It matches our feminine subject (’yar uwata).
ji is a verb that can mean to feel, to sense, to hear.
daɗi is a noun meaning pleasure, goodness, enjoyment, delight.
In Hausa, jin daɗi (literally “feeling/experiencing pleasure”) is a set expression meaning things like:
- to feel good
- to be happy / pleased
- to enjoy something
- to be comfortable or content
So tana jin daɗi = she is feeling good / she is happy / she is enjoying herself.
It’s written as two words because it’s made of a verb (jin, a form of ji) plus a noun (daɗi), but together they function like an idiomatic verb phrase.
In Hausa, the subject pronoun is usually built into the verb as a prefix, so you don’t normally use a separate word like English she.
- ta ci nama – she ate meat (no extra “she”; ta on the verb already means “she”)
- tana jin daɗi – she is feeling good (tana already carries “she is”)
The noun ’yar uwata (my sister) is stated first, and then the verbs carry the appropriate feminine subject markers (ta, tana) that refer back to her.
Yes, but the meaning and structure change slightly.
- With wadda (relative clause):
- ’Yar uwata wadda ta ci nama yanzu tana jin daɗi.
= My sister *who ate meat is now feeling good.
(The meat-eating is extra information describing *which sister.)
- Without wadda:
- ’Yar uwata ta ci nama, yanzu tana jin daɗi.
= My sister ate meat, now she is feeling good.
(Now you have two separate clauses: one event, then a result.)
The version with wadda tightly links “ate meat” as a defining or describing clause for “my sister”.
The chain of reference is:
- ’Yar uwata – my sister (female)
- wadda – feminine singular relative pronoun → must refer back to ’yar uwata
- ta ci nama – ta = she (fem. sg.) → matches ’yar uwata
- tana jin daɗi – tana = she is (fem. sg.) → also matches ’yar uwata
Because everything is consistently feminine singular, the listener understands that ’yar uwata, the person who ta ci nama, is the same person who tana jin daɗi.
For a brother, you would typically use ɗan uwana (my brother; literally “son of my mother”) and switch to masculine agreement:
- ɗan uwana wanda ya ci nama yanzu yana jin daɗi.
- ɗan uwana – my brother
- wanda – masculine singular who/that
- ya ci nama – he ate meat
- yana jin daɗi – he is feeling good
So you see parallel changes:
- ’yar uwata wadda ta ci… tana… (feminine)
- ɗan uwana wanda ya ci… yana… (masculine)