Breakdown of Yara suna wasa da rairayi suna gina ƙaramin gida kusa da ruwa.
ne
to be
ruwa
the water
gida
the house
kusa
near
Questions & Answers about Yara suna wasa da rairayi suna gina ƙaramin gida kusa da ruwa.
What is the function of suna in this sentence, and why does it appear twice?
Suna is the 3rd person plural progressive form, roughly like English “they are …-ing”.
- su = they
- -na = marker for an ongoing action
So suna wasa ≈ “they are playing” and suna gina ≈ “they are building.”
It appears twice because we have two separate ongoing actions:
- they are playing with sand
- they are (also) building a small house
Repeating suna makes it clear that both wasa and gina are full verbs describing what the children are doing at that time. Hausa often repeats the progressive marker like this when listing simultaneous actions.
Could the sentence use only one suna, like Yara suna wasa da rairayi gina ƙaramin gida kusa da ruwa?
No, that would be ungrammatical or at least very odd.
In Hausa, each finite verb in a series normally needs its own tense/aspect marker. So you say:
- Yara suna wasa da rairayi, suna gina ƙaramin gida… ✅
The children are playing with sand, (and) they are building a small house…
If you drop the second suna, gina would be left without a proper tense/aspect marker, which Hausa does not normally allow in this kind of sentence.
Where is the word for “they”? Is it only yara (“children”) or is it also inside suna?