Breakdown of Tsaro yana da muhimmanci sosai a makaranta.
Questions & Answers about Tsaro yana da muhimmanci sosai a makaranta.
Broken down word by word:
- tsaro – safety, security
- yana – he/it is (3rd person singular masculine in the “progressive”/imperfective form: ya + na → yana)
- da – with / has
- muhimmanci – importance
- sosai – very, really, a lot
- a – in / at
- makaranta – school
A very literal gloss would be:
“Safety it-is with importance very at school.”
Natural English: “Safety is very important at school.”
So Hausa is literally saying “Safety has a lot of importance at school.”
In Hausa, da is very flexible. Common meanings:
- “and” (A da B – A and B)
- “with”
- As part of the pattern X yana da Y = “X has Y”
In “Tsaro yana da muhimmanci”:
- yana = “it is” (continuous/imperfective form of “to be” for a masculine noun)
- da = “with / having”
So “yana da muhimmanci” literally means “it has importance”, and idiomatically means “it is important.”
This yana da + noun structure is a very common way of expressing that something has a quality:
- Littafin nan yana da muhimmanci. – This book is important. (lit. “has importance”)
- Gari nan yana da tsabta. – This town is clean. (lit. “has cleanliness”)
Hausa verbs agree with the grammatical gender and number of the subject.
- yana = ya + na
- ya – “he/it” (3rd person singular masculine pronoun)
- na – progressive/imperfective marker
Together: “he/it is [doing/being] …”
The noun tsaro (safety, security) is grammatically masculine, so you use yana.
Some contrasts:
- Masculine singular: tsaro yana da muhimmanci – Safety is important.
- Feminine singular: motar nan tana da muhimmanci – This car is important. (mota is feminine, so tana)
- Plural: dokoki suna da muhimmanci – Rules are important. (dokoki “rules”, so suna)
You wouldn’t normally just say “ya da muhimmanci” in this sense; the na is part of the normal present/imperfective form, so yana da is the standard pattern.
They are related but not the same:
muhimmi – adjective: important
- e.g. Wannan darasin muhimmi ne. – This lesson is important.
muhimmanci – noun: importance
- e.g. Tsaro yana da muhimmanci. – Safety has importance → Safety is important.
- Muhimmancin tsaro a makaranta yana da yawa. – The importance of safety at school is great.
In your sentence, Hausa uses the noun (“importance”) with yana da (“has”) to get the meaning “is important”.
A fairly direct “adjective” style alternative would be:
- Tsaro muhimmi ne a makaranta. – Safety is important at school.
Both are grammatical; “yana da muhimmanci” is very common and slightly more idiomatic-sounding here.
sosai is an intensifier:
- Basic meaning: very, really, a lot, extremely
In this sentence:
- yana da muhimmanci sosai ≈ “is very important” / “is really important.”
About usage:
- You can leave it out:
- Tsaro yana da muhimmanci a makaranta. – Safety is important at school.
- You can sometimes move it, and you will still be understood:
- Tsaro yana da sosai muhimmanci a makaranta. – possible, but less natural; most speakers put sosai after the thing they’re intensifying.
- It can also intensify verbs:
- Na gaji sosai. – I’m very tired.
So the most natural placement in your sentence is exactly as given: after “muhimmanci.”
a is a preposition meaning in / at / on, and makaranta means school.
- a makaranta – at school / in school in a general, non-specific sense
- “at school (as a place in general / in the school environment)”
If you say:
- a makarantar – at the school (a specific school)
- Here you add the definite -r: makaranta → makarantar, similar to “the school”.
So:
- Tsaro yana da muhimmanci sosai a makaranta.
= Safety is very important at school (in schools generally / in the school setting).
If you wanted to refer to a particular school, you might say:
- Tsaro yana da muhimmanci sosai a makarantar nan.
– Safety is very important at this school.
Both are correct, but the nuance is slightly different:
a makaranta – “at school / in school”
- broad, can mean “in the school context/environment” as well as physically at the school.
a cikin makaranta – literally, “in the inside of the school” → inside the school
- more physical/spatial emphasis: inside the building/compound.
In your sentence, “a makaranta” is appropriate because the idea is general: safety is important in the school context, not just literally inside the walls of a building.
Yes. That is both grammatical and natural:
- A makaranta, tsaro yana da muhimmanci sosai.
– At school, safety is very important.
Moving “a makaranta” to the front puts a bit more emphasis on the location (“as for at school…”), but the basic meaning stays the same. Hausa allows this kind of fronting of prepositional phrases for emphasis or discourse focus.
To negate the “yana da” structure, Hausa typically uses “ba … ba/da” with a pronoun:
Pattern (for a masculine singular subject):
[Subject] ba shi da [noun]. – The subject does not have [noun].
So:
- Tsaro ba shi da muhimmanci sosai a makaranta.
– Safety is not very important at school.
(Literally: “Safety, it does not have much importance at school.”)
Notes:
- ba … da here is the negative of yana da.
- shi is the masculine singular pronoun (“he/it”) referring back to tsaro.
- sosai still intensifies, but now it intensifies the lack (“not very important / has little importance”).
For a plural subject, you change yana to suna:
- su + na → suna – “they are (doing/being) …”
Example with dokoki (“rules”):
- Dokoki suna da muhimmanci sosai a makaranta.
– Rules are very important at school.
(Literally: “Rules they-are with much importance at school.”)
So the pattern is:
- Singular masculine: X yana da muhimmanci …
- Singular feminine: X tana da muhimmanci …
- Plural: X suna da muhimmanci …