Learn Hardcore Hausa: Tafiya zuwa gari tana da fa'ida sosai.

Tafiya – journey, trip, travel, going (a verbal noun from tafi “to go”)
zuwa – to, towards (preposition)
gari – town, city (also “village” in some contexts; and in other contexts it can mean “flour”)
tana – “she/it is” or “she/it has” (3rd person singular feminine continuous/attributive form)
da – with / has (here it helps form “has”)
fa'ida – benefit, advantage
sosai – very, really, a lot (intensifier)

So the structure is roughly: “Travel to town it-has benefit very.”

Why is “tana da” used here instead of something like “is”?

In Hausa, “tana da” often expresses possession or the idea “it has …”, and that is a common way to say something is beneficial / is advantageous.

tana da fa'ida = “it has benefit(s)” → “it is beneficial / it is advantageous”.

Hausa doesn’t always use a direct equivalent of English “is” for such statements. Instead, “X tana da Y” (or “X yana da Y”) is a very natural way to say “X has Y” or “X is characterized by Y.” Here:

Tafiya zuwa gari = the activity of going to town
tana da fa’ida sosai = it has a lot of benefits → it is very beneficial.

Why “tana” and not “yana”? What is the difference?

“tana” and “yana” are both 3rd person singular forms, but they differ by grammatical gender:

yana – he/it (masculine) is / has / is doing
tana – she/it (feminine) is / has / is doing

In Hausa, many non-human nouns have fixed grammatical gender.

Tafiya (journey/travel) is grammatically feminine, so you must refer to it with tana, not yana.

That’s why the sentence says:

Tafiya zuwa gari tana da fa'ida sosai,
not “Tafiya zuwa gari yana da fa'ida sosai.”

What exactly is the role of “zuwa” here? Could we just say “Tafiya gari”?

“zuwa” is a preposition meaning “to / towards” and is the normal way to express movement to a place:

tafiya zuwa gari – travel to town
tafiya zuwa Kano – travel to Kano

You generally cannot just drop “zuwa” and say “Tafiya gari” to mean “going to town.” That would sound wrong or at least incomplete.

There is another construction like “tafiyar gari”, but that has a genitive/possessive feel (“the town’s journey” / “the journey of the town”), not “a journey to town.” So:

Correct: Tafiya zuwa gari – a trip to town
Not correct for this meaning: Tafiya gari

Does “gari” always mean “town”? I’ve heard it can mean something else.

“Gari” is polysemous; its meaning depends on context:

Place meaning
- gari – town, city, sometimes “settlement”
- Example: Na je gari. – I went to town.
Food meaning
- gari – flour or powdered grain (especially processed cassava, maize, etc.)
- Example: Ina son gari da miya. – I like gari (flour food) with soup.

In “Tafiya zuwa gari tana da fa’ida sosai.”, the presence of “zuwa” and the general meaning clearly select the “town/city” meaning, not the “flour” meaning.

What nuance does “sosai” add, and where does it normally appear in the sentence?

“Sosai” is an intensifier meaning “very, really, a lot, greatly”. It strengthens whatever quality or state it follows:

fa'ida sosai – very beneficial / a lot of benefit
ina jin daɗi sosai – I feel very good / I’m very happy.

Position: It normally appears after the word or phrase it intensifies, often at the end of the clause:

tana da fa'ida sosai – it has a lot of benefit / it is very beneficial.

You wouldn’t usually place “sosai” before “fa’ida” in this sentence; after is the natural position.

Is the whole phrase “Tafiya zuwa gari” acting as the subject here?

Yes. The structure is:

Subject: Tafiya zuwa gari (travel/going to town)
Predicate: tana da fa’ida sosai (has a lot of benefit / is very beneficial)

So the sentence is saying:

As a general activity, going to town is very beneficial.

Hausa likes to use verbal nouns (like tafiya) as subjects in exactly this way, to talk about activities in general.

Could you rephrase this sentence in another natural way in Hausa with the same meaning?

Several close alternatives are possible, for example:

Zuƙo zuwa gari yana da fa’ida sosai.
(less common; still uses a verbal noun “going to town is very beneficial.”)
Zuwa gari yana da fa’ida sosai.
(“Going to town has a lot of benefit.”)
Tafiya zuwa gari abu ne mai fa’ida sosai.
– Literally: “Going to town is a thing that is very beneficial.”
Tafiya zuwa gari tana da amfani sosai.
– Using amfani (“use”) instead of fa’ida (“benefit”), close in meaning.

Your original sentence is already very natural and idiomatic, though.

Why is there no word for “a” or “the” (no article) before “tafiya” or “gari”?

Hausa generally doesn’t use articles like English “a, an, the”. Nouns appear without them, and definiteness or indefiniteness is inferred from context.

tafiya zuwa gari can be understood as:
- “a trip to town,”
- “traveling to town,” or
- “the trip to town,”
  depending on what is being talked about.

In this sentence, it’s clearly generic: it refers to the activity in general, not one specific trip. So we interpret it as:

“Going to town / Traveling to town is very beneficial.”

Does this sentence talk about a specific trip, or about going to town in general?

By default, “Tafiya zuwa gari tana da fa’ida sosai.” is understood as a general statement:

“(In general) going to town is very beneficial.”

If you wanted to clearly point to one particular trip, you’d usually add extra context or make the phrase explicitly definite, for example:

Waccan tafiya zuwa gari tana da fa’ida sosai.
– That trip to town is very beneficial.

But as it stands, the sentence reads as a general truth or opinion, not a one-time event.