Breakdown of Malamar lissafi tana son dalibai su yi ƙirga kujeru a ɗaki, musamman kafin darasi ya fara.
Questions & Answers about Malamar lissafi tana son dalibai su yi ƙirga kujeru a ɗaki, musamman kafin darasi ya fara.
Malamar lissafi literally means “teacher of arithmetic/mathematics” or simply “math teacher.”
- malama = female teacher
- -r = linking form (genitive) used before a following noun
- lissafi = arithmetic, calculation, math
In Hausa, you normally put the thing possessed/qualified after the noun, so:
- malamar lissafi = the teacher of math
- This is similar to English “math teacher”, but the structure is closer to “teacher of math.”
The expression tana son is a very common pattern in Hausa for “she likes / she loves / she wants.”
Breakdown:
- ta = she (3rd person singular feminine subject pronoun)
- na = aspect marker (here giving a kind of present/habitual/progressive feel)
- Together in speech: ta + na → tana
- son = the possessive form (masdar) of so “love, liking, desire”
So:
- tana son dalibai = She likes/wants the students.
You might see:
- tana so in some contexts, but tana son [something] (with son) is more idiomatic when followed by a noun.
- ta son is possible but much less usual in everyday speech; tana son sounds more natural for present-time meaning.
Yes, dalibai (“students”) is the logical subject, but Hausa often uses a pronoun + verb form in subordinate clauses like “that they should do X.”
- dalibai = students
- su = they (3rd person plural subject pronoun)
- yi = do
- dalibai su yi ƙirga = (that) the students should count
This pattern:
- [NP] + pronoun + verb
is common in Hausa in complements after verbs such as so (to want/like), son (liking), so a yi…, etc.
So tana son dalibai su yi ƙirga literally:
“She is wanting [that] students they-do counting” → “She wants the students to count.”
su yi is in the subjunctive/jussive type of form, not the simple indicative present.
- su = 3rd person plural subject pronoun
- yi = subjunctive/jussive form of yi “do”
In Hausa:
- su yi X often means “let them do X / that they do X / they should do X.”
So after tana son, you get:
- tana son dalibai su yi ƙirga
= “She wants the students to do counting / to count.”
It’s similar to English using the “bare infinitive” after “want”:
- “She wants them to count” (not “they count”).
They are related to numbers, but they don’t mean the same thing.
lissafi
- “arithmetic, calculation, mathematics”
- As in subject in school: “Math.”
- malamar lissafi = the math teacher.
ƙirga
- “to count” (verb; the noun form “counting” comes from the same root)
- yi ƙirga = to do counting → “to count.”
So in the sentence:
- Malamar lissafi = math teacher
- su yi ƙirga kujeru = that they count chairs
Kujera (“chair”) is a common noun that forms its plural by changing the final -a to -u:
- kujera = chair
- kujeru = chairs
This pattern (-a → -u) is a regular plural pattern for many Hausa nouns, especially feminine-like ones:
- mota → motoci (here -a changes differently)
- gida → gidaje
- kofata → kofatu
For kujera, the standard plural is simply kujeru. So:
- ƙirga kujeru = count chairs.
a ɗaki means “in the room.”
- a is a preposition that can mean in, at, on depending on context.
- ɗaki = room.
So:
- kujeru a ɗaki = “chairs in the room.”
You could also sometimes hear a cikin ɗaki (“inside the room”), which is a bit more explicit, but a ɗaki already naturally means “in the room.”
musamman means “especially / particularly / specifically.”
In the sentence:
- … a ɗaki, musamman kafin darasi ya fara.
= “… in the room, especially before the lesson starts.”
You can leave it out grammatically:
- kafin darasi ya fara = before the lesson starts
But then you lose the nuance that this time (before the lesson) is particularly important for the teacher’s request.
So:
- With musamman: “especially before the lesson starts.”
- Without musamman: just “before the lesson starts.”
The form kafin darasi ya fara is a standard way to say “before the lesson starts.”
Breakdown:
- kafin = before (preposition, from kafa “to precede”)
- darasi = lesson, class
- ya fara = “it started / it starts” (3rd person singular perfective of fara, to begin)
Hausa often uses the perfective form after kafin to talk about a future event relative to a reference time:
- kafin darasi ya fara
literally: “before the lesson has begun” → understood as “before the lesson begins/starts.”
Alternative:
- kafin a fara darasi = “before one starts the lesson / before starting the lesson.”
This is also correct and common. The sentence just happens to use the “darasi ya fara” structure instead.
In Hausa, many inanimate nouns (like darasi, “lesson”) take the 3rd person singular masculine pronoun ya in verb agreement.
- darasi (lesson) → ya fara (it started)
- darasi ya fara = “the lesson started / the lesson begins.”
So:
- Even though darasi isn’t a “male” in any real sense, the grammar uses ya as the default for many non-human singular nouns.
If the subject were a clearly feminine human noun (like malama), you would use ta:
- Malama ta fara = The (female) teacher began.
English doesn’t repeat the subject pronoun inside this kind of clause:
- “She wants the students to count chairs.”
But Hausa usually does repeat it:
- dalibai su yi ƙirga
not just dalibai yi ƙirga.
This is because Hausa verb forms generally need an explicit subject pronoun:
- su yi = they should do
- Without su, yi usually feels incomplete in this type of clause.
So the full structure is:
- tana son [dalibai su yi ƙirga kujeru]
= She wants [students they-should-do counting of chairs].
In Hausa, yi is a very common “light verb” meaning “do, perform.”
- yi ƙirga = do counting → count
- This is similar to English “do a count,” “do the washing,” “take a look,” etc.
You can sometimes find ƙirga used more directly as a verb, but yi ƙirga is a very natural, common expression.
So:
- su yi ƙirga kujeru = they should do counting of chairs → they should count the chairs.
Both forms can appear, but they have slightly different flavors:
- darasi ya fara
- Treats darasi as a simple subject noun: “the lesson started.”
- darasin ya fara
- darasin has a definite/genitive-like suffix -n, often implying “the (specific) lesson” in a more marked way, or used when it’s in a genitive relationship.
In many contexts, darasi ya fara is enough to mean “the lesson begins/has started,” especially when the context already makes it clear which lesson is being talked about.
In this sentence, darasi ya fara sounds perfectly natural and doesn’t need the -n.
Both can be used, but there’s a nuance:
Malamar lissafi tana son dalibai su yi ƙirga…
- Literally: “The math teacher, she is wanting the students to count…”
- tana already contains the pronoun ta “she” + aspect na.
- Very natural and explicit agreement with a feminine subject.
Malamar lissafi na son dalibai su yi ƙirga…
- Here na is used directly after the noun phrase.
- This is also grammatical (especially in some dialects/contexts) and can feel slightly more like “The math teacher wants…” as a simple statement without overt subject pronoun.
In everyday speech, “[NP] tana …” (or yana, suna, etc.) is very common and clearly shows agreement with the subject. Using tana here emphasizes that we’re talking about “she (the math teacher)” wanting something.
Yes, there is a crucial difference:
- ƙ is a glottalized / ejective k sound.
- Produced with a kind of “popping” or “stronger” k, with airflow briefly stopped at the glottis then released.
- k is a regular voiceless velar stop, like the k in English “cat.”
So:
- ƙirga (with ƙ) is not the same as if it were written with a plain k.
- Hausa distinguishes ƙ and k in meaning, so it’s important to learn to hear and produce that difference.