Likita ya nuna mana a hoto yadda ƙashi a hannu yake girma tun muna yara.

The doctor showed us in a picture how the bone in the hand grows from when we are children.

Breakdown of Likita ya nuna mana a hoto yadda ƙashi a hannu yake girma tun muna yara.

• ne: to be
• nuna: to show
• yaro: the child
• a: in

Questions & Answers about Likita ya nuna mana a hoto yadda ƙashi a hannu yake girma tun muna yara.

Why do we have both Likita and ya in Likita ya nuna? Isn’t that like saying “The doctor he showed”?

In Hausa, you almost always need a pronoun + tense/aspect marker before the verb, even when you already said the subject as a noun.

• Likita = the doctor (full noun subject)
• ya = 3rd person singular masculine subject pronoun + completive (perfective) aspect marker, roughly he (did)
• nuna = to show

So structurally you get:

• Likita ya nuna… = The doctor, he showed… → which simply means The doctor showed…

This is normal and required in Hausa. The noun (Likita) is like a topic, and ya is the real grammatical subject marker before the verb.

What exactly does ya add to the meaning in ya nuna?

Ya here does two main jobs:

1. Person/gender: it says the subject is 3rd person singular masculine (he/it).
2. Aspect: with a bare verb like nuna, it typically gives a completive / perfective meaning—an event viewed as finished.

So:

• ya nuna ≈ he showed / he has shown (completed action)
• Compare with yana nunawa = he is showing (ongoing) or he usually shows (habitual), using yana instead of ya.

Without ya, the verb nuna cannot stand as a normal finite verb in a sentence.

What is the role of mana in Likita ya nuna mana?