Idan yaro ya yi laifi, uwa tana koya masa ya nemi sulhu da ’yan’uwansa.

to be

Breakdown of Idan yaro ya yi laifi, uwa tana koya masa ya nemi sulhu da ’yan’uwansa.

• da: with
• yaro: the child
• yi: to do

Questions & Answers about Idan yaro ya yi laifi, uwa tana koya masa ya nemi sulhu da ’yan’uwansa.

In this sentence, what exactly does Idan mean—is it closer to if or when?

Idan is a conditional word that can usually be translated as either if or when(ever), depending on context.

Here, with a general statement and a habitual action, it has a generic meaning:

• Idan yaro ya yi laifi…
  → If/When a child does something wrong… / Whenever a child does something wrong…

It does not by itself say whether the situation is real, likely, or just hypothetical. The context here suggests a general rule about what mothers do in that situation, so both if and when(ever) are reasonable translations in English.

Why do we say yaro ya yi laifi instead of something like yaro ya laifi?

In Hausa, many ideas that are expressed with one verb in English are expressed as “do/make + noun”.

• yi = do / make
• laifi = fault, offence, wrongdoing, sin

So:

• ya yi laifi literally: he did/went into offence
  idiomatically: he did something wrong / he committed an offence / he misbehaved

You cannot say ya laifi; you need the verb yi to form a proper predicate. This same pattern appears in many expressions:

• ta yi magana – she spoke (literally: she did speech)
• ya yi aure – he got married (literally: he did marriage)
• suka yi fada – they quarrelled/fought (literally: they did a fight)

So yaro ya yi laifi is simply the normal, grammatical way to say the child does something wrong.