Learn Hardcore Hausa: Komawa gida da wuri yana ba uwa farin ciki.

Komawa gida da wuri is a general statement about the action in general (“returning home early (as a habit / as a thing)”), not about one specific occasion.

If you say:

Na koma gida da wuri.
= I returned home early. (one event, past)

you are using a finite verb with a subject pronoun (na = I).

In the original sentence, Hausa prefers to use a verbal noun (komawa) as the subject when we want to say “X-ing does Y / X-ing causes Y”, e.g.:

Cin abinci da dare yana sa mutum kiba.
“Eating late at night makes a person gain weight.”

What does gida mean here, and why is there no word for “the” or “home”?

Gida literally means house, but very often it means home, just like English “go home”.

Hausa normally does not use a separate word for “a / the”. Context tells you whether it’s specific or general. Here:

gida is understood as “(one’s) home” in a general sense.
The sentence is about the idea of coming home early, not one particular house.

What does the phrase da wuri mean, literally and idiomatically?

Da wuri literally is “with earliness / with promptness”, but idiomatically it just means early.

So:

na dawo da wuri = I came back early
sun tashi da wuri = They woke up early

You’ll also hear related expressions like:

tun da wuri = from very early (on)
da wuri-wuri = very early

What is the role of yana in yana ba uwa farin ciki, and why not just ya ba?

Yana is the 3rd person singular masculine imperfective of the auxiliary ya (“he/it”) plus the continuous marker -na. Together with ba, it gives an imperfective / ongoing / general meaning:

yana ba ≈ “(he/it) gives / is giving / tends to give”

So:

Komawa gida da wuri yana ba uwa farin ciki.
= Returning home early gives / brings a mother happiness. (general truth / habitual)

If you said:

Komawa gida da wuri ya ba uwa farin ciki.

that sounds more like a specific event: “Returning home early (that time) gave the mother happiness.” The original uses yana to express a general tendency or rule.

What is the grammatical subject of yana in this sentence?

The subject of yana is the whole phrase komawa gida da wuri.

So structurally:

Subject: Komawa gida da wuri
Verb: yana ba
Indirect object: uwa
Direct object: farin ciki

You can think of it as:

[Returning home early] gives [a mother] [happiness].

Even though that subject phrase describes an action, it is grammatically a noun phrase because it’s built on the verbal noun komawa.

What does ba mean here, and how do I know it isn’t the negative marker?

Here ba is the verb “to give”.

Hausa has two different ba’s:

ba (verb) = to give
- yana ba uwa farin ciki = “it gives a mother happiness”
ba (negative particle), usually paired with ba … ba or babu, in a different position:
- Ba ya ba uwa farin ciki. = “It does not give a mother happiness.”
- Ba ni da kudi. = “I don’t have money.”

You recognize ba as “give” here because:

It comes right after yana (forming yana ba = “is giving / gives”),
And it is followed by an object (uwa, then farin ciki), which is normal for the verb “give”.

Why is there no word like “to” before uwa, as in “gives happiness to a mother”?

In Hausa, when using the verb ba (“to give”), the indirect object (the receiver) usually comes directly after the verb, without a preposition like “to”:

ya ba ni kudi = he gave me money
sun ba su abinci = they gave them food

So in our sentence:

yana ba uwa farin ciki
= (it) gives mother happiness

No separate word for “to” is needed; the word order shows that uwa is the recipient.

Why is it just uwa and not something like uwar ta (“his/her mother”)? Is it a specific mother or mothers in general?

Uwa by itself means a mother or mother in a generic sense. Here it means “a mother / any mother / a (typical) mother”.

If you wanted to be specific or show possession, you could say:

uwar sa / uwar ta = his / her mother
uwar yara = the children’s mother

So:

Komawa gida da wuri yana ba uwa farin ciki.
= Returning home early makes a (typical) mother happy.

It’s talking about mothers in general, not one particular, identified mother.

What does farin ciki literally mean, and why is it used for “happiness”?

Farin ciki is a common idiom for happiness / joy.

Literally:

fari / farin = whiteness / white
ciki = inside, belly, stomach

So farin ciki is something like “whiteness of the inside” – metaphorically, a bright or light heart/inside, i.e. happiness.

Grammatically it’s a noun phrase, and in this sentence it is the direct object of ba:

yana ba uwa farin ciki
= (it) gives the mother happiness / joy.

Is the overall word order fixed, or could I say something like Yana ba uwa farin ciki komawa gida da wuri?

The natural word order here is:

Subject (verbal noun phrase): Komawa gida da wuri
Verb phrase: yana ba
Objects: uwa farin ciki

So:

Komawa gida da wuri yana ba uwa farin ciki.

Putting komawa gida da wuri at the end:

Yana ba uwa farin ciki komawa gida da wuri

is not natural; it sounds confusing or incorrect to a native speaker. In Hausa, when a verbal noun phrase is the subject in this kind of general statement (“X-ing causes Y”), it normally comes at the beginning of the sentence.

How could I rephrase this idea using a more explicit “cause/make” verb instead of ba?

A very common alternative is to use sa (“to cause, to make”) together with yi farin ciki (“be happy”):

Komawa gida da wuri yana sa uwa ta yi farin ciki.
Literally: “Returning home early causes a mother to be happy.”

Here:

yana sa = “(it) causes / makes”
uwa ta yi farin ciki = “the mother be happy”

Both versions are natural; the original with ba … farin ciki sounds a bit more like “gives her happiness”, while the sa … yi farin ciki version literally says “makes her be happy”.