Learn Hardcore Hausa: A gidan kaka muna kwana a kan tabarma a ƙasa, mu rufe kanmu da bargo. - At grandmother’s house we sleep on a mat on the floor and cover ourselves with a blanket.

A gidan kaka = At Grandma’s/Grandpa’s house.
Without a, gidan kaka on its own is more like just Grandma’s house as a noun phrase.
With a, it clearly becomes a locative expression: at Grandma’s house.

In everyday speech, people sometimes drop a before places when the meaning is clear, but in careful/standard Hausa it is good to keep it.

What is the difference between “gida” and “gidan”?

gida = house, home (basic form).
gidan is gida + -n, a genitive/possessive ending.

So:

gida (alone) = a house / home.
gidan kaka = the house of (the) grandparent → Grandma’s/Grandpa’s house.

That -n (or sometimes -r, depending on the next sound) is added when another noun follows and “owns” it, like:

gidan malam – the teacher’s house
gida → gidan because it is followed by kaka (the possessor).

Does “kaka” mean “grandmother” or “grandfather”, and where is “my” in this phrase?

In Hausa:

kaka can mean grandmother, grandfather, or grandparent, depending on context.
To be very clear, speakers often add a pronoun:
- kakata – my grandmother (often female in meaning)
- kakana – my grandfather (often male in meaning)

In gidan kaka, there is no explicit “my”. Hausa can leave out the possessive pronoun if it is obvious from context whose grandparent you’re talking about. So gidan kaka is usually understood as Grandma’s house (the one we all know about), and in English we naturally say “at my grandma’s house” even though “my” is not literally present in Hausa.

What does “muna kwana” mean grammatically? Is “muna” like “we are”?

Yes. muna is roughly “we are (doing …)”.

mu = we (subject pronoun)
na (here) marks imperfect / ongoing / habitual aspect
muna = mu + na

So:

muna kwana literally: we-IMPF sleep-overnight
→ we sleep (there) / we spend the night (there).

It can describe:

something happening now: we are spending the night (there), or
a habitual action: we (usually) spend the night (there).

Context decides which feels more natural in English.

What exactly does the verb “kwana” mean? Is it just “to sleep”?

kwana does not mean “sleep” in the general sense; it is more specific:

kwana = to spend the night somewhere / to pass the night.

So muna kwana a kan tabarma = we spend the night on a mat, rather than just we sleep.

For general “sleep” (the act of sleeping), Hausa often uses:

yin barci – to sleep (literally to do sleep), e.g. Ina yin barci – I am sleeping / I sleep.

In “a kan tabarma”, what does “a kan” mean? Why not just one word?

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

a – at / in / on
kan – literally head, top, surface
a kan tabarma – on (top of) a mat.

You may also see akan written as one word. Rough guide:

a kan (two words) – literally at top-of, “on top of”.
akan (one word) – often used as a preposition meaning about / regarding / usually.

In real usage, both spellings appear, but for learners it’s safer to think of a kan as “on (top of)” in this sentence.

What does “a ƙasa” mean, and why is “ƙ” used instead of “k”?

a ƙasa here means “on the floor / on the ground”.

ƙasa (with ƙ, an implosive / special k) = earth, ground, floor, country.
a again is the locative preposition at / in / on.

So:

a ƙasa = on the ground / on the floor.

Spelling note:

ƙ and k are different consonants in Hausa and can change the meaning of words.
ƙasa (with ƙ) is the word for earth / ground; kasa (with ordinary k) is a different word (e.g. to fail).

Why does the sentence change from “muna kwana” to “mu rufe kanmu” instead of saying “muna rufe kanmu”?

The switch is a common stylistic/grammatical pattern.

muna kwana – we are / we (usually) spend the night… (imperfect/habitual).
mu rufe kanmu – literally we cover our-head(s).

Here mu before a bare verb (rufe) is often called the subjunctive or short imperfect. After another verb, it can simply continue the sequence of actions:

muna kwana …, mu rufe kanmu da bargo
≈ we spend the night …, (and) we cover ourselves with a blanket.

You could also say:

muna kwana …, muna rufe kanmu da bargo,

which would sound a bit more like listing two parallel habitual actions. The version with mu rufe is very natural and fluent in storytelling.

What does “kanmu” literally mean, and why is it used instead of just a pronoun like “us”?

kanmu is made of:

kan – head, top (also used for “self” in some expressions),
-mu – our.

So kanmu literally = “our head(s)”.

In many Hausa expressions, head/top words (kai / kan) are used where English would use “self/selves”. Here:

mu rufe kanmu da bargo – we cover our heads with a blanket, but idiomatically it means “we cover ourselves with a blanket.”

For a single person you might see:

Na rufe kaina da bargo – I covered myself with a blanket.

In “da bargo”, what does “da” mean? Is it “and” or “with”?

In this sentence da means “with / using”, not “and”.

Hausa da is quite flexible; it can mean:

and (when joining nouns):
- burodi da shayi – bread and tea
with / using (instrumental):
- Ina yanka nama da wuka – I am cutting meat with a knife
having (as an adjective-like marker):
- mutum mai gemu da hula – a man with a beard and a cap

Here:

mu rufe kanmu da bargo = we cover ourselves *with a blanket* (instrumental use).

How is “and” expressed between the two actions? There is no word like “and” in the Hausa sentence.

Hausa often links clauses just by putting them one after another, especially when the subject is the same.

muna kwana a kan tabarma a ƙasa, mu rufe kanmu da bargo – literally: we spend the night on a mat on the floor, we cover ourselves with a blanket.

English naturally inserts “and”, but Hausa relies on:

the comma / pause, and
the repeated subject marker mu,

to show that this is the next action.

If you really want an explicit “and”, you can add kuma:

… muna kwana a kan tabarma a ƙasa, kuma muna rufe kanmu da bargo.
– … we sleep on a mat on the floor, *and we cover ourselves with a blanket.*

Does “muna kwana” here mean “we are sleeping” right now or “we usually sleep” there?

The form muna kwana can express both:

present ongoing: we are (right now) spending the night…
habitual / repeated: we (whenever we’re there) spend the night…

In a typical narrative like this, English “we sleep / we usually sleep / we spend the night” is a good translation, because the speaker is describing what generally happens at Grandma’s house, not a single night.

Context (storytelling vs a live report) tells the listener whether to understand it as habitual or right now.