Malami bai faɗa wa kowa sirrin ba, domin yana girmama hankalin yaron.

to be

Breakdown of Malami bai faɗa wa kowa sirrin ba, domin yana girmama hankalin yaron.

• ba … ba: not
• malami: the teacher
• wa: to

Questions & Answers about Malami bai faɗa wa kowa sirrin ba, domin yana girmama hankalin yaron.

What does bai ... ba mean here, and how is it different from ba ya ... ba?

In Hausa, bai ... ba is the common way to say “he did not …” in the completed (perfective) aspect.

• bai faɗa ... ba ≈ “he did not tell (at all / on that occasion)”
• ba ya faɗa ... ba would mean “he does not tell / he is not telling” (an ongoing or habitual action).

So:

• Malami bai faɗa wa kowa sirrin ba
  = “The teacher did not tell anyone the secret” (a specific past or completed event).

If you said:

• Malami ba ya faɗa wa kowa sirrin ba,
  it would mean something like “The teacher doesn’t tell anyone the secret” (as a general or ongoing behavior), not a one-time past action.

Why is there no explicit word for “he” before bai?

In Hausa, the subject pronoun is usually built into the verbal form itself, so you often don’t add a separate pronoun like shi (“he”) unless you want to emphasize it.

• bai already encodes “he (3rd person singular masculine) + negative perfective marker”.
• So bai faɗa literally carries “he (did) not tell” inside it.

You could say:

• Shi malami bai faɗa wa kowa sirrin ba

to emphasize “the teacher, he didn’t tell anyone the secret”, but it’s not required grammatically.

What is the function of wa in faɗa wa kowa sirrin?