Breakdown of Uwa ta ga kusan duk maɓallan gidan sun ɓace, sai ta ajiye guda ɗaya a jaka.
gani
to see
gida
the house
a
in
uwa
the mother
Questions & Answers about Uwa ta ga kusan duk maɓallan gidan sun ɓace, sai ta ajiye guda ɗaya a jaka.
What is a more literal, word‑for‑word breakdown of this Hausa sentence?
Uwa ta ga kusan duk maɓallan gidan sun ɓace, sai ta ajiye guda ɗaya a jaka.
- Uwa – mother
- ta – she (3rd person singular feminine subject pronoun, perfective)
- ga – saw (perfective form of gani “to see”)
- kusan – almost
- duk – all
- maɓallan – keys (plural of maɓalli “key”)
- gidan – the house / of the house (gida “house” + possessive/definite ending ‑n)
- sun – they (3rd person plural subject pronoun, perfective)
- ɓace – disappeared / are missing / have been lost
- sai – so / then (here, a linking conjunction)
- ta – she (again, 3sg feminine subject pronoun, perfective)
- ajiye – put / set down / kept
- guda ɗaya – one single one (literally “one unit, one”)
- a – in / at / on (general preposition of location)
- jaka – bag
Very literal sense:
“Mother saw [that] almost all the keys of the house had disappeared, so she put one (single) (of them) in a bag.”
Why is it “ta ga” and not something like “ta gani” for “she saw”?