Malami ya gyara kuskuren da muka yi, ya ce mu sake rubuta amsa daidai.

The teacher corrected the mistake we made; he said we should write the answer correctly again.

Breakdown of Malami ya gyara kuskuren da muka yi, ya ce mu sake rubuta amsa daidai.

• malami: the teacher
• amsa: the answer
• yi: to do
• mu: we
• da: that
• ce: to say
• kuskure: the mistake
• gyara: to correct
• rubuta: to write
• sake: again
• daidai: correctly

Questions & Answers about Malami ya gyara kuskuren da muka yi, ya ce mu sake rubuta amsa daidai.

In “Malami ya gyara…”, what is the function of ya? Does it just mean “he”, and can I leave it out?

In Hausa, ya here is a subject pronoun + tense/aspect marker for 3rd person singular masculine in the perfective.

• Malami = “teacher”
• ya gyara = “he corrected”

So Malami ya gyara… literally is “(The) teacher, he corrected…”.

In standard Hausa:

• You normally cannot drop this ya.
• The pattern [full noun subject] + [subject pronoun] + [verb] is normal and required:
  
  • Malami ya gyara – The teacher corrected
  • Ali ya tafi – Ali went
  • Malamai suka zo – The teachers came

The ya doesn’t just mean “he” in isolation; it also marks the perfective (completed) aspect. Without it, the sentence would be ungrammatical.

What does “kuskuren da muka yi” literally mean, and how is it built?

Breakdown:

• kuskure – mistake, error
• kuskuren – the mistake (with the linker/definite -n)
• da – relative particle: “that / which”
• muka yi – “we did / we made” (in a relative/focus form)

So kuskuren da muka yi = “the mistake that we made”.

Structure:

• [noun] + -n + da + [relative clause]
  • kuskuren da muka yi – the mistake that we made
  • mutumin da na gani – the man that I saw

Here muka is a special 1st plural perfective form used inside relative clauses (and some other focus environments), instead of mun.

Why is it “muka yi” and not “mun yi” for “we did/made” in that phrase?

Hausa has two sets of perfective subject markers:

• Normal narrative forms (used in simple statements):

  • mun yi – we did
  • kun yi – you (pl.) did
  • sun yi – they did

• Relative/focus forms (used after da in relative clauses, in certain focus structures, etc.):

  • muka yi – we did
  • kuka yi – you (pl.) did
  • suka yi – they did

Because muka yi is inside a relative clause introduced by da:

• kuskuren da muka yi → it must use the relative/focus form muka, not mun.

Could I just say “kuskuren mu” for “our mistake” instead of “kuskuren da muka yi”? What’s the difference?

Yes, you can say kuskurenmu or kuskuren mu (“our mistake”), but the nuance is different:

• kuskuren mu / kuskurenmu – our mistake

  • Focus on ownership: it’s our mistake (not someone else’s).

• kuskuren da muka yi – the mistake that we made

  • Focus on the action of making the mistake.

In your sentence, “kuskuren da muka yi” highlights that:

• the teacher corrected the specific error that we (actively) made,
  not just any error that belongs to us.

In “ya ce mu sake rubuta…”, what does “mu” do before “sake rubuta”?

Here mu is a subjunctive/imperative subject pronoun meaning “we (should)”:

• mu sake rubuta ≈ “that we should rewrite / for us to rewrite”

After verbs like ce (“say”), Hausa often uses a subjunctive clause for commands or reported commands:

• ya ce mu tafi – he said (that) we should go / he told us to go
• ya ce ka zauna – he said (that) you should sit / he told you to sit

So in your sentence:

• ya ce mu sake rubuta amsa daidai
  = “he told us to write the answer again correctly.”

What exactly does “sake” mean in “mu sake rubuta”? Is it the same as “again” in English?

sake is a verb meaning roughly “to do again / to redo / to repeat”.

When it comes before another verb, it usually has the sense of “do X again”:

• sake rubuta – write again, rewrite
• sake duba – look again, re-check
• sake tambaya – ask again

It is very close to English “again”, but grammatically it behaves like a verb that combines with another verb, not like an adverb.

Another common word is kāra (“again, more”):

• ya sake tambaya – he asked again (literally: he repeated asking)
• ya kara tambaya – he asked again / he asked more (slight nuance of additional asking)

In your sentence, sake is the natural choice for “rewrite”.

Does “amsa daidai” mean “correct answer” or “to answer correctly”? How does “daidai” work here?

amsa = answer
daidai = correct, exact, right

In “mu sake rubuta amsa daidai”, the most natural reading is:

• “rewrite the answer correctly”
  i.e. daidai functions adverbially, describing how the writing should be done.

Hausa often uses adjectives as adverbs without any change in form:

• ya yi daidai – he did it correctly / he was right
• ta yi sauri – she went quickly (sauri literally “speed”)
• sun yi kyau – they did it nicely / well

If you really wanted to highlight “the (one) correct answer” as a noun phrase, you might see forms like:

• amsa madaidaiciya – a correct/proper answer
• amsar da ta yi daidai – the answer that is correct

But in the given sentence, it’s more like “write the answer in a correct way.”

Why is there another “ya” in “, ya ce mu sake rubuta…” instead of just continuing with “ce mu sake rubuta”?

In Hausa, each finite verb clause normally has its own subject pronoun:

1. Malami ya gyara kuskuren da muka yi – (The) teacher corrected the mistake we made
2. ya ce mu sake rubuta amsa daidai – he said we should rewrite the answer correctly

Even when the subject is the same (“teacher”), you usually repeat the subject marker (ya) at the start of the new clause. Dropping it before ce:

• ✗ … kuskuren da muka yi, ce mu sake rubuta…

would be wrong; ce needs a subject marker:

• ✓ … ya ce mu sake rubuta… – he said we should rewrite…
• ✓ … ta ce mu sake rubuta… – she said we should rewrite…

So the second ya simply starts a new clause, with its own subject marking.

How would the sentence change if the teacher was a woman?

You would change both the noun and the subject pronoun to feminine:

• Malamīya ta gyara kuskuren da muka yi, ta ce mu sake rubuta amsa daidai.

Changes:

• Malami → Malamīya – female teacher
• ya → ta – 3rd person singular feminine subject pronoun in the perfective

So:

• ta gyara – she corrected
• ta ce – she said

What is the “-n” at the end of “kuskuren” doing?

The -n (or -r / -n depending on the word) is the linker (often also called a genitive/construct marker), and here it also makes the noun definite.

Compare:

• kuskure – a mistake, mistake (general)
• kuskuren da muka yi – the mistake that we made

The pattern is:

• [noun] + -n/-r + [following element]

Examples:

• littafin Malam – the teacher’s book
• gidan su – their house
• kuskuren da muka yi – the mistake that we made

So kuskuren is “the mistake (which…)”, with the linker tying it to the relative clause da muka yi.

How would I say “The teacher was correcting the mistake we made” instead of “corrected”?

You would use the imperfective (progressive) form of the verb:

• Malami yana gyara kuskuren da muka yi.

Breakdown:

• yana gyara – he is/was correcting (depending on context or added time phrase)
• kuskuren da muka yi – the mistake that we made

With an explicit past-time word:

• Jiya, Malami yana gyara kuskuren da muka yi.
  – Yesterday, the teacher was correcting the mistake we made.

Can “mu” in this sentence ever mean just “we” as a subject like in “mu mun yi”?

In your sentence, mu is clearly the subjunctive marker (“we should”), not a free-standing subject pronoun.

Hausa distinguishes:

• independent pronoun (used for emphasis, etc.):

  • mu – we
  • Mu mun yi kuskure. – We (indeed) made a mistake.

• subject pronoun in finite clauses:

  • mun yi – we did (perfective)
  • muke yi – we do / we are doing (imperfective)

• subjunctive pronoun (after verbs like ce, or in commands/wishes):

  • mu yi – that we should do / let’s do
  • ya ce mu yi – he said we should do

In “ya ce mu sake rubuta…”, the mu is the subjunctive pronoun, functioning like “(that) we should”.