Jiya mun gasa kifi a tanda ba a kan murhu ba.

Yesterday we baked fish in the oven, not on the stove.

Breakdown of Jiya mun gasa kifi a tanda ba a kan murhu ba.

• ba … ba: not
• jiya: yesterday
• a kan: on
• a: in
• kifi: the fish
• murhu: the stove
• tanda: the oven
• gasa: to bake

Questions & Answers about Jiya mun gasa kifi a tanda ba a kan murhu ba.

What does each word in Jiya mun gasa kifi a tanda ba a kan murhu ba. literally mean?

Word by word:

• jiya – yesterday
• mun – we (perfective marker: we did / we have …)
• gasa – to roast / grill / bake with dry heat
• kifi – fish
• a – in / at / on (a general preposition)
• tanda – oven
• ba … ba – not … (negation that brackets whatever is being denied)
• a kan murhu – on the stove (literally on top of the stove)

So a very literal breakdown is: Yesterday we-roasted fish in oven, not on-top-of stove.

Why does the sentence start with jiya instead of putting yesterday at the end, like in English?

Hausa usually likes to put time expressions at or near the beginning of the sentence.

• Jiya mun gasa kifi… – Yesterday we roasted fish… (very natural)

You can move jiya a bit, but not every position sounds equally natural:

• Mun gasa kifi jiya a tanda. – Also acceptable, but slightly less neutral than putting jiya first.

In practice, time word + clause (like Jiya mun…) is very common and feels natural to native speakers.

What exactly does mun mean, and how is it different from mu or muka?

mun is the 1st person plural perfective subject pronoun: we (did something / have done something). It carries both “we” and the completed-action idea.

• mun gasa – we roasted / we have roasted

Compare:

• mu – plain pronoun we, used in places like:

  • mu ne – it is us
  • mu ke – we (are the ones who…)

• muka – a relative / focus perfective form, often used when you’re emphasizing we or when the clause is in a relative or focused structure:

  • Mu ne muka gasa kifi. – It is we who roasted fish.

So in a simple narrative sentence about a finished action in the past, mun is the normal choice:
Jiya mun gasa kifi… – Yesterday we roasted fish…

Does mun gasa mean specifically “we roasted”, or could it also mean “we baked”?

gasa basically means cooking with dry heat, without liquid oil or water covering the food. Depending on context, in English it can be:

• roast – e.g. meat over a fire or in an oven
• grill – on open fire / grill
• bake – things like bread or cakes, or even fish in an oven

So:

• mun gasa kifi – we roasted/grilled/baked fish (the exact English verb depends on how you picture the cooking; Hausa doesn’t always draw the same verbal boundaries as English).

By contrast:

• soya – fry in oil
• dafa – boil / cook in water or liquid

So if oil-frying were meant, you’d expect mun soya kifi, not mun gasa kifi.

Is kifi singular or plural here? Does it mean a fish or fish in general?

kifi is grammatically singular, meaning a fish / one fish.
The regular plural is kifaye = fishes / fish (as separate items).

However, in real speech:

• People often use kifi in a mass sense: fish as food, without counting how many.
• In that sense, English would just say fish, not a fish or fishes.

So mun gasa kifi can be understood as:

• we roasted fish (some fish, fish as food)

If you really wanted to emphasize several separate fish, you could say:

• mun gasa kifaye – we roasted (several) fish / fishes.

What is the role of a in a tanda and a kan murhu?

a is a very general preposition that can correspond to in / at / on in English, depending on context.

In this sentence:

• a tanda – in the oven
• a kan murhu – on top of the stove

In a kan murhu:

• kan means top / surface, and a kan together is like on (the surface of).
  Some speakers write akan as one word, but a kan as two words is also common.

So the underlying pattern is:

• a + location word → in/at/on that location
• a kan + noun → on top of that noun

What exactly is tanda? Is it a particular kind of oven?

tanda is the normal Hausa word for oven. It can refer to:

• a modern metal or electric oven
• or a more traditional clay/brick oven, depending on context

In daily speech, if someone says a tanda, they almost always mean cooking in some kind of oven, as opposed to on a stove or over an open fire.

There isn’t a separate everyday basic word that distinguishes “modern kitchen oven” from “traditional oven” in the way English sometimes does; tanda covers the general idea.

Why do we have ba … ba around a kan murhu? Why two ba’s?

In Hausa, a common way to negate a phrase (especially when you’re contrasting it) is with ba … ba bracketing the part you deny.

In this sentence, the part being denied is a kan murhu:

• ba a kan murhu ba – not on the stove

So the structure is:

• (positive clause)… a tanda
• ba a kan murhu ba – not on the stove (contrastive negative phrase)

The first ba marks the start of the negated unit, and the second ba closes it. This ba … ba pattern is very typical in Hausa for emphasis or contrast.

Could I drop the second ba and just say ba a kan murhu?

In careful, standard Hausa, the two ba’s normally go together:

• ba a kan murhu ba – not on the stove

If you drop the last ba, it sounds incomplete or dialectal, and in many contexts it would be felt as incorrect or at least non‑standard.

So for learners, it’s safer to always use the full bracket:

• ba + [thing negated] + ba

Why do we say ba a kan murhu ba instead of ba kan murhu ba? Is the extra a necessary?

Here a kan functions together as on (top of):

• a kan murhu – on the stove

If you said ba kan murhu ba without the a, you’d be left with just kan murhu, which by itself is more like the surface/top of the stove, not a complete prepositional phrase meaning on the stove.

So:

• a kan murhu – on the stove (grammatical preposition + noun phrase)
• ba a kan murhu ba – not on the stove

The a is part of the needed prepositional structure and should not be dropped here.

What is murhu exactly? A gas stove, a fire, or something else?

murhu is a general word for a cooking place with heat—traditionally:

• a 3‑stone or clay/metal stand where you put a pot over a fire

In modern settings, murhu can also refer to a stove more generally (charcoal, kerosene, gas, etc.), essentially “the thing you cook on,” as opposed to an oven (tanda).

So in this sentence:

• a tanda – in the oven
• a kan murhu – on the stove / on the cooking fire setup

Could the sentence be said without the “not on the stove” part? Would it still sound natural?

Yes. The basic positive sentence would be:

• Jiya mun gasa kifi a tanda. – Yesterday we roasted/baked fish in the oven.

That’s perfectly natural.

Adding ba a kan murhu ba simply adds a contrast:

• We used the oven, not the stove.

So the original sentence is a way to highlight the choice of cooking method.

If I wanted to emphasize that it was specifically yesterday (and not another day) that we roasted the fish, would the sentence change?

You could use a focus construction to emphasize jiya, for example:

• Jiya muka gasa kifi a tanda, ba a kan murhu ba.

Here:

• muka (instead of mun) is the focus/relative perfective form, linked with jiya as the focused element.
• This makes yesterday more contrastive: It was yesterday that we roasted the fish in the oven, not on the stove (not some other day).

For everyday, neutral storytelling, though, Jiya mun gasa kifi a tanda ba a kan murhu ba. is already fine and natural.