Uwa tana ba da labari kafin barci.

to be

Breakdown of Uwa tana ba da labari kafin barci.

• barci: the sleep
• uwa: the mother
• kafin: before

Questions & Answers about Uwa tana ba da labari kafin barci.

What exactly does tana mean in this sentence?

Tana is a combination of:

• ta = she (3rd person singular feminine)
• na = a marker that often shows a continuous / progressive action

So tana ba da labari literally means she is giving a story → she is telling a story.

Because uwa (mother) is grammatically feminine in Hausa, you use tana, not yana (which is for masculine).

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Why do we say ba da labari and not just use a single verb for "tell a story"?

In Hausa, ba da literally means to give, and labari means story / news / information.

So:

• ba da labari = to give a story / information → idiomatically to tell a story, to give a report, to narrate something

You’ll see ba da used in many similar expressions:

• ba da shawara = to give advice
• ba da umarni = to give an order
• ba da gudummawa = to give a contribution

So ba da labari is the normal, natural way to say tell a story in Hausa.

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Does Uwa mean "a mother", "the mother", or "my mother"?