Likita ya ce ’yar uwata za ta samu sauƙi bayan ta sha magani.

to get

Breakdown of Likita ya ce ’yar uwata za ta samu sauƙi bayan ta sha magani.

• ’yar uwa: the sister
• ce: to say
• likita: the doctor

Questions & Answers about Likita ya ce ’yar uwata za ta samu sauƙi bayan ta sha magani.

How is the Hausa sentence structured? What are the main pieces?

You can see the sentence as five chunks:

• Likita – the doctor
• ya ce – said (literally: he said)
• ’yar uwata – my sister (literally: daughter of my mother)
• za ta samu sauƙi – will get better / will recover
• bayan ta sha magani – after she takes/has taken medicine

So the overall structure is:

Likita (subject) + ya ce (reporting verb) + [clause]
[clause] = ’yar uwata za ta samu sauƙi bayan ta sha magani
my sister will get better after she takes medicine

What exactly does Likita mean? Is it only “doctor”?

Likita means doctor in the modern (Western) medical sense:

• Likita – medical doctor (physician, GP, hospital doctor, etc.)

It’s not used for traditional healers; those are more often called boka or mai magani gargajiya (traditional healer).

So:

• Likita = a trained medical doctor, as in the sentence.

Why do we have ya before ce? What does ya ce mean exactly?