A kowace sati ina zuwa kasuwa sau biyu.

A is a preposition that often means “in / at / on”, and it is very commonly used to introduce time expressions in Hausa.

• A kowace sati = “(on) every week” or “every week” as a time setting.
• It’s similar to saying “On Mondays…” or “In January…” in English.

Is it necessary?

• You can often drop it in casual speech: Kowace sati ina zuwa kasuwa sau biyu.
• Keeping a sounds a bit more complete and natural, especially in careful or formal speech, but both forms are understandable.

The word kowace comes from the adjective kowane / kowanne / kowacce, which means “every / each”. It changes form to agree with the grammatical gender of the noun.

Very roughly:

• kowane / kowanne = masculine singular (“every X” where X is grammatically masculine)
• kowace / kowacce = feminine singular (“every X” where X is grammatically feminine)

In this sentence:

• sati (week) is treated as grammatically feminine in this variety of Hausa.
• Therefore we use the feminine form kowace: A kowace sati…

You may also hear slightly different shapes like kowacce depending on speaker and dialect, but the key point is: the form of kowane/kowace must agree with the noun’s gender.

Sati means “week”.

Hausa actually has more than one word related to “week”:

• sati – “week”
• mako (plural: makonni) – also “week” in many contexts

Usage can vary by region and speaker. In everyday speech, both sati and mako can appear. For example:

• A kowace sati – every week
• A kowane mako – every week

The sentence you’re learning simply chooses sati, which is very common and perfectly natural.

Ina is the 1st person singular form of a verb meaning roughly “to be (in a state / doing something)”.

• ina – I am
• kana – you (m.sg) are
• kina – you (f.sg) are
• yana – he is
• tana – she is
  … and so on.

When ina is used before a verbal noun like zuwa, it typically expresses present, ongoing, or habitual action.

So:

• Ina zuwa kasuwa can mean “I am going to the market” or, in a context with kowace sati, more naturally “I (regularly) go to the market.”

Because the sentence also has A kowace sati (“every week”), the whole thing is clearly habitual: it describes something you do regularly, not a one‑time event.

Zuwa is a very flexible word in Hausa. In this sentence it functions as a verbal noun / infinitive-like form meaning roughly “going (to)”.

So:

• ina zuwa kasuwa ≈ “I am (in the state of) going to the market” → naturally understood as “I go to the market.”

Why not just a simple verb for “go”?

• Hausa often uses ina + verbal noun to express ongoing or habitual actions.
  • Ina aiki – I am working / I work
  • Ina karatu – I am studying / I study
  • Ina zuwa kasuwa – I am going / I go to the market

There is a finite verb je (“to go”), but it usually appears in different constructions (e.g. zan je kasuwa – “I will go to the market”). In the ina + verbal noun pattern, zuwa is the normal choice.

Kasuwa means “market”.

Hausa does not have articles like English “a / an / the”. There is no separate word that directly equals “the”.

• kasuwa can mean “a market”, “the market”, or just “market”, depending on context.
• In daily life, kasuwa usually refers to “the (local) market”, just like when English speakers say “I’m going to market” in some dialects.

If you want to be more specific, you add extra words rather than an article:

• kasuwar Kano – the market of Kano / Kano market
• kasuwa babba – the big market, etc.

But the basic noun kasuwa itself has no article built in.

Sau biyu means “two times / twice.”

• sau – literally “time(s)” as in “number of occurrences”
• biyu – the number “two”

So:

• sau ɗaya – once (one time)
• sau biyu – twice / two times
• sau uku – three times
• sau huɗu – four times
• sau biyar – five times, etc.

To ask “How many times?”, you say:

• sau nawa?

For example:

• Sau nawa kake zuwa kasuwa a kowace sati? – How many times do you (m.sg) go to the market every week?

In A kowace sati ina zuwa kasuwa sau biyu, sau biyu is a frequency expression, and putting it at the end is very natural in Hausa.

However, Hausa word order is fairly flexible, so you may also hear:

• Ina zuwa kasuwa sau biyu a kowace sati.
• A kowace sati sau biyu nake zuwa kasuwa. (using nake instead of ina in a slightly different structure)

All of these can describe the same idea. The differences are mostly about emphasis and style, not basic grammar. For a learner, keeping sau biyu at the end, just as in your original sentence, is perfectly fine.

No, it’s not always necessary, but it’s very common.

All of these are possible:

• A kowace sati ina zuwa kasuwa sau biyu.
• Ina zuwa kasuwa sau biyu a kowace sati.
• Ina zuwa kasuwa a kowace sati sau biyu.

Putting the time phrase first (A kowace sati…) is a common and natural way to set the time frame, similar to English “Every week, I go to the market twice.”

As you get more comfortable with Hausa, you’ll see that time and place expressions can appear in different positions depending on what the speaker wants to emphasize.

Yes. The sentence you have is already understood as habitual because of A kowace sati and sau biyu, but Hausa also has forms that more explicitly mark habitual or customary actions.

For example:

• A kowace sati sau biyu nakan je kasuwa.

Here:

• nakan je – a construction often used for “I usually go / I tend to go / I habitually go.”

So you can think of the nuances as:

• A kowace sati ina zuwa kasuwa sau biyu. – Every week I go to the market twice.
• A kowace sati sau biyu nakan je kasuwa. – Every week I usually/tend to go to the market twice.

Both sentences are correct for a learner; the first one with ina zuwa is very common and safe to use.