Yarinya ta ji kunya lokacin da malami ya yaba mata a gaban aji.

The girl felt shy when the teacher praised her in front of the class.

Breakdown of Yarinya ta ji kunya lokacin da malami ya yaba mata a gaban aji.

• malami: the teacher
• ji: to feel
• ta: her
• aji: the class
• lokacin da: when
• a gaban: in front of
• yarinya: the girl
• kunya: shy
• yaba: to praise

Questions & Answers about Yarinya ta ji kunya lokacin da malami ya yaba mata a gaban aji.

What does ta mean in Yarinya ta ji kunya? Is it “she” or a tense marker?

In Yarinya ta ji kunya, ta is both:

• a subject pronoun = “she”
• and a past tense marker for 3rd person singular feminine

So:

• Yarinya ta ji kunya ≈ “The girl she-past feel shame” → “The girl felt shy.”

Hausa doesn’t usually say an extra “she” afterwards; ta already carries “she” + past.
You wouldn’t say Yarinya ta ji kunya ita in normal speech.

What exactly does ji mean in ta ji kunya? I thought ji meant “hear”.

Yes, ji by itself commonly means “to hear” or “to feel/sense”.
In Hausa, it’s used in set expressions like:

• ji zafi – feel pain / feel heat
• ji daɗi – feel pleasure / be pleased
• ji yunwa – feel hunger / be hungry
• ji kunya – feel shame/embarrassment, be shy

So in ta ji kunya, ji has the “feel” meaning:
“she felt kunya (shame/embarrassment).”

What is the nuance of kunya? Does it mean “shy”, “ashamed”, or “embarrassed”?

Kunya covers several English ideas, depending on context:

• shyness (being timid or easily embarrassed)
• embarrassment (especially when made the center of attention)
• shame, but often milder than strong moral guilt

In this sentence, where the teacher praises her in front of the class, ta ji kunya is best taken as:

• “she felt shy / she felt embarrassed”

Not heavy moral shame, more like modesty + embarrassment from attention.

What does lokacin da mean, and how is it used?

Lokacin da literally is:

• lokaci – time
• -n – “of” (genitive linker, often not written separately)
• da – “when/that” (here, a clause linker)

Together, lokacin da = “the time that / when”.

It introduces a time clause, just like English “when”:

• Lokacin da ya zo, mun tafi. – When he came, we left.
• Ta ji kunya lokacin da malami ya yaba mata. – She felt shy when the teacher praised her.

Word order: [main clause] ... lokacin da [subordinate clause] or vice versa:

• Lokacin da malami ya yaba mata, yarinya ta ji kunya. – perfectly fine too.

What is the exact meaning and role of malami here? Is it “a teacher” or “the teacher”?

Malami means “teacher” (singular, usually male, but can be generic).

Hausa doesn’t always mark definiteness (“a” vs “the”) the same way English does.
Here, malami can be understood as:

• “the teacher” (most natural in this context)

If you want to be clearly definite, you can say:

• malamin – “the teacher” (literally “teacher-the”)

E.g.: lokacin da malamin ya yaba mata – “when the teacher praised her.”

But in many contexts, bare malami with the right context is read as “the teacher”.

Why is it ya yaba mata and not something like ya yaba ta for “praised her”?

The verb yaba (“to praise / to commend / to appreciate”) typically takes an indirect object with wa / ma (“to/for”) rather than a direct object ta/ita.

Structure:

• yaba wa / yaba ma
  • person = praise someone

So:

• malami ya yaba mata
  
  • ya – he (3rd person masc. past)
  • yaba – praised
  • ma ta → mata – to her

Literally: “the teacher praised to-her” → “the teacher praised her / commended her.”

Yaba ta would sound odd or wrong; you use ma/wa with the appropriate pronoun instead.

What does mata mean here? Is it “women” or “to her”?

Good to distinguish:

• mata (noun) = women (plural of mace, “woman”)
• ma ta → mata (preposition + pronoun) = to her / for her

In ya yaba mata, it is the second one:

• ma – to/for
• ta – her (3rd person fem. object pronoun)
• Combined in speech/writing as mata = “to her”

So here mata is “to her”, not “women”. Context and verb usage make this clear.

What does a gaban aji literally mean?

Breakdown:

• a – in/at/on (general preposition)
• gaba – front, presence, ahead
• gaban – “the front/presence of …” (genitive form)
• aji – class (as in classroom group, not social class)

So a gaban aji literally is:

• “in the front of (the) class”
• or more idiomatically: “in front of the class / in the presence of the class.”

That’s why the sentence implies she was praised publicly, in front of her classmates.

Could it also be a gaban ajin instead of a gaban aji?

Yes, ajin is aji + -n (“class” + definite marker “the”).

• a gaban aji – in front of a class / in front of the class (context-dependent)
• a gaban ajin – more explicitly “in front of the class”

Both are possible; Hausa often relies on context for definiteness, so aji is common.
Adding -n just makes the noun more clearly definite.

Why is it Yarinya ta ji kunya and not something like Yarinya tana jin kunya?

Both are grammatical but they differ in aspect (how the action is viewed in time):

• ta ji kunya – completed event; “she felt shy (at that moment).”
• tana jin kunya – ongoing/habitual state; “she is (usually) shy / she is feeling shy (now or generally).”

In the sentence, we’re talking about a specific event in the past (when the teacher praised her), so the perfective form ta ji kunya is appropriate.

How do we know this sentence is in the past tense?

We know it’s past primarily from the subject markers:

• ta ji – she (feminine) perfective (past/completed)
• ya yaba – he (masculine) perfective (past/completed)

These forms (bare ta / ya directly before the verb) typically indicate a completed action, most often translated as past in English.

Compare:

• yarinya ta ji kunya – the girl felt shy (past)
• yarinya tana jin kunya – the girl is/was feeling shy (continuous)
• yarinya za ta ji kunya – the girl will feel shy (future)

What does Yarinya itself imply? Is it any girl, a young girl, or a daughter?

Yarinya usually means:

• a girl, often a young girl (child or teenager), sometimes also “young woman”
• in some contexts it can also mean “daughter” (especially in compounds like ’yar gida – daughter of the house), but by itself it’s normally “girl”.

Here, Yarinya ta ji kunya… is best read as “The girl felt shy …”, with the age nuance of a younger person, not an adult woman.