Learn Hardcore Hausa: Uwa tana dafa ganye tare da wake yau. - Mother is cooking leafy vegetables together with beans today.

ta dafa ganye = she cooked greens / she has cooked greens (completed action)
tana dafa ganye = she is cooking greens (right now / around now, or as an ongoing activity)

In writing you may sometimes see ta na as two words, but tana as one word is very common. The important idea is: subject pronoun (ta) + progressive (-na) + verb (dafa).

Does this sentence describe something happening right now, or just sometime today?

Tana usually marks an ongoing or current action, like English “is cooking”. However, in Hausa:

Uwa tana dafa ganye tare da wake yau.

can mean:

Mother is cooking greens with beans today (i.e. at this moment), or
Mother is cooking greens with beans today (at some point later today, but it’s already planned / under way in a broad sense).

Context and tone decide whether you mean “right now” or “sometime today.” Putting yanzu (now) makes the “right now” meaning explicit:

Uwa tana dafa ganye tare da wake yanzu.
Mother is cooking greens with beans now.

Why is the subject pronoun feminine? How would this change with “father”?

Uwa (mother) is grammatically feminine, so you use the 3rd person feminine pronoun ta inside tana:

Uwa tana dafa ganye…
Mother is cooking greens…

If the subject were Uba (father), which is masculine, you would use ya:

Uba yana dafa ganye tare da wake yau.
Father is cooking greens with beans today.

Compare:

ta-na → tana (she is …-ing)
ya-na → yana (he is …-ing)

Can I drop uwa and just say Tana dafa ganye tare da wake yau?

Yes, if it is clear from context who you are talking about.

Tana dafa ganye tare da wake yau.
She is cooking greens with beans today.

Hausa usually keeps the subject pronoun inside the verb phrase (tana, yana, etc.), and the full noun (like uwa) is optional when the listener already knows who “she” is.

So:

With explicit subject: Uwa tana dafa ganye…
Without explicit subject: Tana dafa ganye… (if “she” is already known)

What exactly does ganye mean? Is it just “leaf,” or does it already imply “vegetable greens”?

Ganye literally means leaf / leaves, but very often it is used to mean leafy vegetables / greens (spinach-like leaves, sorrel, bitter leaf, etc.).

So in cooking contexts, ganye is usually understood as edible leaves used as vegetables, not just any random leaf from a tree. If you need to be more specific, you can name the particular plant:

ganyen zogale – moringa leaves
ganyen alayyahu – spinach leaves (or a similar leafy green)

What does wake mean here, and is it singular or plural?

Wake means beans (the food). In practice it works like a mass / collective noun:

wake – beans (in general)
kilo ɗaya na wake – one kilo of beans
wake biyu – two beans (or sometimes two “measures” / “portions,” depending on context)

Hausa often doesn’t mark countable plurals for foods the way English does; context tells you whether you mean one bean, many beans, or beans as a dish. In this sentence, wake clearly means beans as food.

What is the role of tare da? Could I just use da for “with”?

Tare da is a common way to say “together with” / “along with”, so:

ganye tare da wake – greens together with beans

Da on its own can also mean “with”, and in many everyday sentences you could say:

Uwa tana dafa ganye da wake yau.

and be understood as “Mother is cooking greens with beans today.”

Nuance:

tare da is a bit more explicit about togetherness / combination.
Plain da is more general “with” and appears in many other functions (and, possession, instruments, etc.).

In this particular sentence, tare da and da both work, but tare da emphasizes the idea that the two things are cooked together.

Where can yau (today) go in the sentence? Is its position fixed?

Yau is quite flexible. All of these are acceptable, with slightly different emphasis:

Uwa tana dafa ganye tare da wake yau.
(neutral; “today” at the end)
Yau uwa tana dafa ganye tare da wake.
(emphasizes today; roughly “Today, Mother is cooking greens with beans.”)
Uwa yau tana dafa ganye tare da wake.
(focus a bit more on Mother today as the time when she is doing it)

Natural-sounding options for a learner:

Put yau at the end, as in the original, or
Put yau at the very beginning for emphasis.

Why is there no word for “the” in Uwa tana dafa ganye…?

Hausa does not have articles like English “the” or “a/an”. Nouns like uwa, ganye, wake are bare; their definiteness is understood from context or added words.

So:

uwa can mean “a mother,” “the mother,” “Mother” (as a specific person)
ganye can mean “leafy vegetables,” “some greens,” “the greens”, etc.

To make things more specific you can use other devices:

uwar nan – this mother / that mother here
wannan ganyen – these particular greens
wani ganye – some greens / a certain kind of greens

How would I say “My mother is cooking greens with beans today”?

You can mark possession on uwa:

Uwata tana dafa ganye tare da wake yau.
My mother is cooking greens with beans today.

Breakdown:

uwa – mother
-ta – my → uwata – my mother

Colloquially you may also hear:

Mama ta tana dafa ganye tare da wake yau.
(literally “my mum is cooking greens with beans today”)

But uwata is a straightforward, clear form for learners.

How would I say “Mother cooks greens with beans every day” (a habitual action)?

You have two main options:

Still use tana, plus an adverb like kowace rana (every day). Context then makes it habitual:
- Uwa tana dafa ganye tare da wake kowace rana.
  Mother cooks greens with beans every day.
Use the habitual marker kan instead of -na:
- Uwa kan dafa ganye tare da wake kowace rana.
  (very naturally: Mother habitually cooks greens with beans every day.)

For everyday speech, option 1 is very common and easy for learners. Option 2 is more clearly “habitual” in the grammar.

How do I make this sentence negative, as in “Mother is not cooking greens with beans today”?

A common negative pattern for the present/progressive is:

Uwa ba ta dafa ganye tare da wake yau ba.
Mother is not cooking greens with beans today.

Key points:

ba … ba is the general negation frame.
ba goes before the subject pronoun (ta) and often repeats at the end of the clause, especially in careful / formal speech.
The -na in tana usually disappears in the negative; you get ba ta dafa… rather than ba tana dafa…

In more casual speech, people often drop the final ba:

Uwa ba ta dafa ganye tare da wake yau.

Is there a simpler way to say just “Mother is cooking today” without mentioning the food?

Yes. A very natural way is to use girki (cooking / the meal):

Uwa tana girki yau.
Mother is cooking today.

Here:

girki = cooking / (the) meal / food preparation in general.

This is commonly used in everyday speech to say that someone is in the process of preparing food.