Learn Hardcore Hausa: Da dare ni da ’yar uwata muna kwanta a kan gado mu yi barci. - At night my sister and I lie on the bed and sleep.

So da dare is usually understood as “at night” in a habitual or general way, especially in a sentence like this. If you wanted to be very clearly “tonight”, Hausa would normally add something like yau da dare (“tonight”, literally “today at night”).

Similar patterns:

da safe – in the morning
da rana – in the afternoon / during the day
da yamma – in the evening

Why do we have ni (“I”) in ni da ’yar uwata, but the verb is plural muna (“we are”)? Is that normal?

Yes, this is normal in Hausa.

ni da ’yar uwata literally = “I and my sister”.
Grammatically, the subject as a whole is plural (two people), so the verb takes the 1st person plural form muna (“we are [doing]”).

So the pattern is:

Ni da ’yar uwata muna kwanta …
→ “My sister and I lie down … / My sister and I are lying down …”

In English we also say “My sister and I are lying down”, not “My sister and I am lying down”. Hausa works the same way: the subject phrase contains I, but the verb agrees with the whole group, not just with “I”.

Also note:

You do not say *mu da ’yar uwata for “my sister and I”.
The normal forms are ni da ’yar uwata or ’yar uwata da ni (“my sister and I / I and my sister”).

What does ’yar uwata literally mean, and why does it mean “my sister”?

Analyze it piece by piece:

’yar = “daughter of / female child of” (from ’ya “daughter/child”).
uwa = “mother”.
uwata = “my mother” (uwa
- ‑ta “my”).
So ’yar uwata = “daughter of my mother”.

In Hausa kinship terms, “daughter/child of my mother” is understood as “my (female) sibling”, i.e. my sister.

A few related examples:

’dan uwa – male sibling / brother (’dan = “son of / male child of”).
’dan uwana – my brother (“son of my mother”).
’ya’yana – my children (plural of ’ya).

So ’yar uwata = “my sister (same mother)”. In everyday speech, it simply means “my sister” unless you need to be very specific.

What is the difference between kwanta, kwana, and yi barci? They all seem to have to do with sleeping.

They are related but not the same:

kwanta
- Basic meaning: to lie down / to get into a lying position.
- Often used for lying down in order to sleep, but it focuses on the physical action of lying down.
- Example: Ka kwanta! – “Lie down!”
kwana
- Basic meaning: to spend the night / to stay overnight / to sleep (overnight).
- Focus is on spending the night somewhere, not just the moment of lying down.
- Example: Mun kwana a Kano. – “We spent the night in Kano.”
yi barci
- barci is a noun meaning “sleep” (the state/activity).
- yi barci literally = “do sleep” → idiomatic “to sleep / to be asleep”.
- Example: Yaro yana yin barci. – “The child is sleeping.”

In your sentence:

muna kwanta a kan gado – “we lie down on the bed” (the action of lying down)
mu yi barci – “so that we sleep / in order to sleep” (the actual sleeping)

So it’s like: “At night my sister and I lie down on the bed to sleep.”

Is muna the same as mu na? Which one should I use?

Functionally, yes: muna is essentially a contracted form of mu na.

mu = 1st person plural subject (“we”).
na (here) = progressive/habitual marker.
mu na kwanta → over time became muna kwanta in normal speech and writing.

Today, for the 1st person plural, you will almost always see and say:

muna kwanta – “we lie down / we are lying down”

You might see mu na separated in slow or very careful speech, or in older-style texts, but muna is the standard modern form in everyday usage.

Why do we say a kan gado? Could I say akan gado or just a gado instead?

You really want a kan gado here.

Breakdown:

a = general preposition “in/at/on (location)”.
kan = “top / surface / on top of”.
a kan gado = “on top of the bed / on the bed”.

About the alternatives:

akan gado (as one word)
- Written as one word, akan is usually a different preposition meaning “about / concerning / usually”.
- So akan gado would read more like “about the bed” / “concerning the bed”, which is not what you want here.
a gado
- Literally “at bed / in bed”.
- It can occur in some contexts, but for the clear meaning “on the bed (physically lying on it)”, the natural form is a kan gado.

So for this sentence, a kan gado is the correct and most natural choice.

Why do we suddenly switch to mu yi barci after muna kwanta? Why is mu needed again?

Hausa normally requires a subject pronoun in front of each finite verb form, even if it’s the same subject.

In your sentence, there are effectively two verbal parts:

muna kwanta a kan gado – “we (habitually) lie down on the bed”
mu yi barci – “(so that) we sleep”

Here, mu yi barci is like a purpose clause: “(so that) we sleep / to sleep”.

mu is a 1st person plural subject pronoun (“we”).
yi is a verb (do/make), here making a verbal expression out of barci.
Because yi is a finite verb, Hausa grammar wants a subject pronoun in front of it, even though “we” is already understood from earlier.

In English we might compress this to “we lie down on the bed to sleep” (no extra “we”), but Hausa keeps mu:
muna kwanta … mu yi barci.

Why can’t we just say mu barci instead of mu yi barci?

Because barci by itself is a noun, not a verb.

barci = “sleep” (the thing/activity).
Hausa often forms a verbal idea from a noun using yi (“do/make”), so:
- yi barci = “do sleep” → “sleep” (verb).

So:

✅ mu yi barci – “we sleep”.
❌ *mu barci – ungrammatical as a finite verb phrase.

This yi + noun pattern is very common in Hausa:

yi magana – “speak” (literally “do speech/talk”)
yi aure – “get married” (literally “do marriage”)
yi wasa – “play” (literally “do play/game”)

So think of yi barci as the normal way to say “sleep” as an action.

How do I know if gado here means “a bed” or “the bed”, since there is no article in Hausa?

Hausa does not have separate words for “a” and “the” like English does. A bare noun such as gado can be translated either way, depending on context.

a kan gado could be “on a bed” or “on the bed”.
In a normal family/home context, English speakers would naturally say “on the bed”, so that’s how we usually translate it.

Hausa has other ways to make things clearly definite or specific, for example:

a kan gadon nan – “on this bed”
a kan gadon ɗakinmu – “on the bed of our room / on our room’s bed”
a kan wani gado – “on some (unspecified) bed”

But in a simple sentence like yours, gado by itself is left bare, and English adds “the” or “a” according to what sounds natural in that context.

Could I move da dare to another place in the sentence, like: Ni da ’yar uwata muna kwanta da dare a kan gado mu yi barci? How flexible is the word order?

Yes, Hausa word order is fairly flexible for time and place expressions, though some positions sound more natural.

Your original:

Da dare ni da ’yar uwata muna kwanta a kan gado mu yi barci.

You can also say, for example:

Ni da ’yar uwata muna kwanta da dare a kan gado mu yi barci.
Ni da ’yar uwata da dare muna kwanta a kan gado mu yi barci.

These are still understandable and acceptable. General tendencies:

Time expressions like da dare often appear at the beginning of the sentence or just after the subject:
- Da dare ni da ’yar uwata muna kwanta …
- Ni da ’yar uwata da dare muna kwanta …
Place expressions like a kan gado typically come after the verb they relate to:
- … muna kwanta a kan gado …

Very long clusters of adverbials can make a sentence feel heavy, so native speakers tend to keep this order:

[Time] + [Subject] + [Verb] + [Place] + [(purpose/result clause)]

Your original sentence follows that pattern well, which is why it sounds particularly natural.