Learn Hardcore Hausa: A cikin al'umma mai kyau, mutane suna yin kasuwanci ba tare da cutar da juna ba. - In a good community, people do business without harming one another.

A cikin – in, inside (of)
- a – at / in (general preposition)
- cikin – inside, in the middle of
al'umma – community, society, people as a social group
mai kyau – good, beautiful, of good quality
- mai – “having / possessing (a quality)”
- kyau – goodness, beauty
  → mai kyau = “that has goodness” → “good”
mutane – people (plural of mutum “person”)
suna yin kasuwanci – they are doing business / they trade
- su – they (3rd person plural pronoun)
- -na – aspect marker → suna = “they are (doing)” (progressive)
- yin – doing (verbal noun of yi “to do”)
- kasuwanci – trade, business
ba tare da … ba – without …
- tare da – together with
- ba … ba – negative frame → “not / no / without”
  → ba tare da X ba = “(lit.) not together with X” → “without X”
cutar da – to harm, to hurt, to injure
- cuta – disease, harm
- cutar da – “to harm (someone)” (verbal expression)
juna – each other / one another (reciprocal pronoun)

Putting it all together:

“In a good community, people are doing business without harming each other.”

What exactly does “A cikin” mean, and why are there two words for “in”?

A cikin is a very common way to say “in / inside (something)” in Hausa.

a = at, in, on (very general preposition)
cikin = inside, in the middle of

When combined, a cikin X is stronger and more specific than just a X:

a cikin al'umma – in (the midst of) the community / in society
a al'umma – grammatically possible in some contexts, but less natural here and can sound incomplete or awkward.

So:

A cikin al'umma mai kyau = In a good community / Within a good society
It paints a picture of being inside the environment of that community, not just vaguely “at” it.

What does “al'umma” mean exactly? Is it singular or plural?

Al'umma is singular and roughly means:

community
society
a people (as a social group)

It refers to a collective group treated as a unit, like:

al'ummar kauye – the village community
al'ummar musulmi – the Muslim community

In your sentence, al'umma mai kyau is “a good community / a good society”. Even though it refers to many people collectively, grammatically al'umma is singular, just like English community or society.

How does “mai kyau” work? Why not just say “kyau” or “kyakkyawa”?

In Hausa, one common way to describe a noun by a quality is:

noun + mai + quality-noun

Here:

mai = “having / possessing (something)”
kyau = goodness, beauty, attractiveness

So:

al'umma mai kyau = a community having goodness → a good community

Other examples:

mutum mai kirki – a good / decent person
mota mai tsada – an expensive car (car with expense)
gida mai girma – a big house (house with bigness)

Why not just kyau or kyakkyawa?

kyau by itself is usually the bare noun “goodness / beauty”:
- kyau ne. – It’s good / beautiful.
kyakkyawa is an adjectival form “beautiful (feminine)” and needs agreement with feminine nouns (e.g. mace kyakkyawa – a beautiful woman).

Using noun + mai + quality is a very common, neutral, and productive pattern that works well here, so al'umma mai kyau sounds very natural.

What is “mutane”, and how is it different from “mutum”?

mutum = a person, a human being (singular)
mutane = people (plural)

So:

mutum – one person
mutane – two or more people / people generally

In the sentence:

mutane suna yin kasuwanci – people are doing business / people trade

You can’t say mutum suna… because mutum is singular and doesn’t match suna (“they are”). For a single person, you’d use:

mutum yana yin kasuwanci – a person is doing business

What does “suna yin kasuwanci” tell us about tense or aspect?

Suna yin kasuwanci is a progressive / continuous form:

su – they
-na – progressive aspect marker
→ suna = they are (doing)
yin – doing (verbal noun of yi “to do”)
kasuwanci – trade, business

So suna yin kasuwanci = they are doing business or they (regularly) do business.

Rough patterns:

suna yin X – they are doing X / they do X (present, ongoing or habitual)
suke yin X – similar, often used in relative/embedded clauses
suka yi X – they did X (completed action, past)
za su yi X – they will do X (future)

Here, it naturally reads as a general, habitual truth about that kind of community:
“In a good community, people (normally) do business without harming each other.”

Why do we say “suna yin kasuwanci” and not just “suna kasuwanci”?

Both are possible in some contexts, but they are not exactly the same structure.

suna yin kasuwanci
- yi = to do
- yin kasuwanci = “doing trade / doing business”
  This is literally “they are doing business (they are doing trade)”.
suna kasuwanci
- Here kasuwanci is treated more like the verb itself: “they are trading”.

In everyday speech, yin kasuwanci is very common and natural, and often preferred when talking about engaging in the activity of business/trade. It has a slightly more explicit “doing the activity” feel.

So:

mutane suna yin kasuwanci – people are doing business / are engaged in trade
mutane suna kasuwanci – also understandable: people are trading

The sentence you have chooses the more explicit yin kasuwanci, which is very idiomatic.

How does the structure “ba tare da … ba” work to mean “without”?

Ba tare da … ba is a set structure meaning “without …”. It literally wraps a phrase with ba … ba (negation) around tare da (“together with”).

Breakdown:

tare da – together with
ba … ba – not / no (negative frame)

So:

ba tare da taro ba – without a meeting
ba tare da izini ba – without permission
ba tare da matsala ba – without problem(s)

In your sentence:

ba tare da cutar da juna ba – without harming each other

Think of it as: > ba [tare da (X)] ba → not together with X → “without X”

Important points:

You must have both ba elements for this standard structure.
The phrase between them (here tare da cutar da juna) is what you’re saying is absent.

What is “cuta / cutar da” here? Is it a noun or a verb, and why the -r?

Base form:

cuta – disease, illness; also more abstractly: harm, damage

In your sentence, it appears as part of the expression cutar da:

cutar da ≈ to cause harm to / to harm / to hurt (someone)

What’s going on?

cuta is a noun “harm / illness”.
Hausa often uses a “construct” or linking -r/-n to connect a noun to what it affects:
- cuta + -r + da (someone) → “the infliction of harm on (someone)”
Over time, cutar da functions almost as a verb phrase meaning “to harm / to injure”.

So:

cutar da mutum – to harm a person
cutar da yara – to harm children
cutar da juna – to harm each other

In ba tare da cutar da juna ba, you can understand cutar da juna as “harming each other”, even though it is built from a noun plus linker plus da.

What does “juna” mean, and how is it used?

Juna is a reciprocal pronoun meaning “each other / one another”.

It’s used when an action is mutual between two or more people:

suna ƙaunar juna – they love each other
sun taimaki juna – they helped each other
kar ku ji tsoron juna – don’t be afraid of one another

In your sentence:

cutar da juna – to harm each other
ba tare da cutar da juna ba – without harming each other

So juna stands for “each other” and is usually used after a verb (or verb-like expression) that naturally allows a reciprocal meaning.

Could the word order be different, like putting “mutane” first? Would that change the meaning?

You could change the word order somewhat, but it affects emphasis and naturalness.

Original:

A cikin al'umma mai kyau, mutane suna yin kasuwanci ba tare da cutar da juna ba.
→ Emphasis on the type of community: In a good community, people do business without harming each other.

If you start with mutane:

Mutane suna yin kasuwanci ba tare da cutar da juna ba a cikin al'umma mai kyau.

This is grammatical, but the focus shifts more toward the people and what they do, and then you add where at the end. It sounds more like:

People do business without harming each other in a good community.

In natural usage, fronting the prepositional phrase (A cikin al'umma mai kyau) is a very typical way to set the scene and define the context first, which fits a general statement about “in a good society…”.

So both can be understood, but the original word order is more idiomatic for a general, proverb-like observation.