Elon.io is an online learning platform
We have an entire course teaching Hausa grammar and vocabulary.
Questions & Answers about Malami ya rubuta sabuwar kalma da jimla biyu a kan allo.
What does ya mean in this sentence, and why is it there if we already have malami?
Ya is a subject pronoun that also carries tense/aspect information.
- It is 3rd person singular masculine, perfective.
- It refers back to malami (teacher), which is grammatically masculine.
In Hausa, a finite verb normally needs this kind of pronoun in front of it, even if the subject noun is already stated. So:
- Malami ya rubuta… = literally “Teacher he-wrote…”, but in normal English: “The teacher wrote…”.
If the teacher were female, you would say:
- Malama ta rubuta sabuwar kalma da jimla biyu a kan allo.
- ta = 3rd person singular feminine perfective, agreeing with malama.
What tense or aspect is ya rubuta? Can it mean both “wrote” and “has written”?