Breakdown of ’Yar uwata tana kallon kanta a madubi kafin ta tafi makaranta.
ne
to be
makaranta
the school
tafi
to go
a
in
Questions & Answers about ’Yar uwata tana kallon kanta a madubi kafin ta tafi makaranta.
What does ’yar mean here, and why does it start with that little mark (’)?
’yar is the feminine form of ɗa / ɗan (child, son). By itself, ’ya / ’yar means daughter or girl.
In this sentence, ’yar is part of the set phrase ’yar uwa, which means sister (literally daughter of [my] mother).
The mark ’ in front of y shows this is a special consonant in Hausa (a “glottalized” /y/), different from plain y. In practice you can think of it as a slightly “harder” y sound; many learners just pronounce it like yar.
If uwa means mother, why does ’yar uwata mean my sister and not my daughter?
Literally, ’yar uwata is:
- ’yar = daughter
- uwa = mother
- -ta = my (on a feminine noun; more on this below)
So ’yar uwata is daughter of my mother. In normal usage, that is understood as my sister (female child of my mother).
For my daughter, you would typically say ’yata (my daughter), not ’yar uwata.
What does the ending -ta in uwata mean? Could I say uwana instead?