Na yi haƙuri kawai ina karanta littafi har motar ta fara tafiya.

Literally, Na yi haƙuri is:

• na – “I” (1st person perfective marker)
• yi – “did / made”
• haƙuri – “patience, endurance”

So word‑for‑word: “I did patience” → idiomatically “I was patient / I endured / I waited patiently.”

In this sentence it means “I waited patiently / I just endured the wait”, not “I said sorry.” It focuses on putting up with the situation (the car not moving yet) rather than apologizing.

Hausa very often uses light verbs like yi (“to do/make”) with a noun to form a verbal expression.

Some common ones:

• yi haƙuri – to be patient / endure
• yi magana – to speak (lit. “do speech”)
• yi tafiya – to travel, go on a journey (lit. “do travel”)

So yi haƙuri is the normal idiomatic way to say “be patient / endure.” There is a verb jira for “wait”, but:

• Na yi haƙuri = “I was patient / I bore with it.”
• Na jira = “I waited (for something/someone).”

In this context, the speaker is emphasizing enduring the wait patiently, so yi haƙuri is natural.

kawai usually means “only, just, simply”.

In Na yi haƙuri kawai ina karanta littafi…, it softens or limits what the speaker did:

• “I just waited patiently, reading a book…”
• “I only kept patient, reading a book…”

It suggests the speaker did nothing else special; they simply stayed patient and read.
If you remove kawai, the meaning is still understandable, but you lose that nuance of “that’s all I did / nothing more than that.”

Position‑wise, kawai typically comes after the word or phrase it is limiting. Here it follows Na yi haƙuri, so it modifies that whole action.

The difference is aspect (ongoing vs completed):

• ina karanta littafi – progressive/continuous: “I was reading a book / I am reading a book.”
• na karanta littafi – perfective/completed: “I read a book (finished).”

In the sentence:

• Na yi haƙuri – a completed decision/stance: “I (took the attitude of) being patient.”
• ina karanta littafi – an ongoing activity during that time: “(while) I was reading a book.”

So the combination expresses: > I waited patiently, (spending that time) reading a book, until the car started moving.

Saying Na yi haƙuri, na karanta littafi… would sound more like two completed actions in sequence, rather than one ongoing background activity.

Hausa often shows “while” / “as” relationships by aspect and juxtaposition, not by a separate word:

• Na yi haƙuri – completed stance (“I was patient”).
• ina karanta littafi – ongoing action (“I was reading a book”).

Putting them directly together, with the second clause in the progressive, naturally suggests:

“I waited patiently, (spending that time) reading a book…”

So the progressive aspect and the fact that they’re side by side gives the sense of simultaneity (“while”) without needing a word like “while.”

In this context, har means “until” / “up to the point when.”

So:

• har motar ta fara tafiya ≈ “until the car started moving.”

Typical uses of har include:

• Na jira ka har ƙarfe huɗu. – I waited for you until four o’clock.
• Ta yi kuka har ta gaji. – She cried to the point that she got tired.

sai can also introduce a later event, but it often carries nuances like “then/only then,” “not until,” or introduces a result or next step. Using har here stresses the duration leading up to the car’s movement.

So:

• ina karanta littafi har motar ta fara tafiya = “I was reading a book right up until the car began to move.”

It looks redundant in English, but it’s normal and very common in Hausa.

Structure:

• motar – “the car” (a full noun phrase, feminine)
• ta – “she/it (feminine)” as a subject pronoun
• fara tafiya – “began to travel / began to move”

So motar ta fara tafiya is literally like saying:

“The car, it began to move.”

This is a resumptive subject pronoun: when the subject is a full noun phrase, Hausa commonly repeats it with a pronoun before the verb. It doesn’t sound wrong or redundant to Hausa speakers; it’s the normal pattern.

Both come from the same noun:

• mota – “car” (basic form)
• motar – “the car / car‑(something)” (construct/possessive or definite form)

The -r (or -ar depending on context) is a linking/construct ending used when:

1. The noun is followed by something that belongs to it, e.g.:
   • motar gida – the car of the house / the family car
2. It’s a definite subject and is directly followed by a pronoun + verb, as here:
   • motar ta fara tafiya – “the car (it) started to move”

So here motar is best understood as “the car” in a more definite sense than just “a car.”

After fara (“to begin/start”), Hausa normally uses a verbal noun (masdar), not the simple verb form.

• tafi – verb: “to go, to leave”
• tafiya – verbal noun: “going, travel, journey”

Common pattern:

• fara tafiya – to begin going / start traveling
• fara magana – to start talking / begin speech
• fara cin abinci – to start eating (lit. start eating of food)

So motar ta fara tafiya is literally “the car started (its) going/travel,” which corresponds to English “the car started to move / started moving.”

Using bare tafi here (ta fara tafi) would be ungrammatical or very odd in standard Hausa.

The original:

Na yi haƙuri kawai ina karanta littafi har motar ta fara tafiya.

This order is very natural: (1) stance, (2) ongoing activity, (3) “until” clause.

Possible and still natural variations (with slightly different emphasis):

• Ina karanta littafi kawai na yi haƙuri har motar ta fara tafiya.
  – More emphasis on the reading as the main background activity.

• Na yi haƙuri har motar ta fara tafiya kawai ina karanta littafi.
  – Puts a stronger focus on the long waiting period “until the car started moving”, with reading mentioned a bit more loosely at the end (this is less common stylistically but understandable).

What you wouldn’t normally do is break har away from the clause it governs or separate motar from ta fara tafiya. For example:

• ✗ Na yi haƙuri kawai har motar ina karanta littafi ta fara tafiya. – feels broken and unnatural.

So you have some flexibility, but keeping each mini‑unit together is important:

• Na yi haƙuri kawai
• ina karanta littafi
• har motar ta fara tafiya

1. Remove kawai:

   • Na yi haƙuri ina karanta littafi har motar ta fara tafiya.

   Meaning: “I was patient, reading a book until the car started moving.”

   Difference: you lose the nuance of “just / only”. It sounds a bit more neutral; not wrong, just less “I wasn’t doing anything special, I just did this.”

2. Remove har:

   • Na yi haƙuri kawai ina karanta littafi motar ta fara tafiya.

   This is odd and less clear in standard Hausa. You lose the explicit “until” relationship, and it can sound like:

   “I was patient, just reading a book; the car started moving.”

   – two facts placed side by side, without clearly saying that the reading continued up to the moment when the car started moving.
   To keep the “until” meaning without har, you’d normally use another word like sai or rephrase.

So har is essential for conveying the “up until” idea; kawai is optional and adds the “just / only” nuance.

It’s the same phrase, but the function depends on context and tone.

• As a polite formula, Yi haƙuri / Don Allah, yi haƙuri =
  “Sorry”, “Excuse me”, “Please be patient with me.”

• In this narrative sentence, Na yi haƙuri =
  “I was patient / I endured it / I put up with it.”

So:

• Imperative / addressing someone:
  
  • Yi haƙuri. – “Be patient / Sorry / Bear with me.”
• Description of yourself in the past:
  
  • Na yi haƙuri. – “I was patient / I put up with it.”

In context here, nobody is being apologized to; it describes the speaker’s attitude during the wait.