Learn Hardcore Hausa: Baba ba ya kan ci abinci danye, yana so a dafa komai sosai. - Father does not usually eat raw food; he wants everything to be well cooked.

Baba kan ci abinci danye = Baba usually eats raw food.
Baba ba ya kan ci abinci danye = Baba doesn’t usually / generally doesn’t eat raw food.

If you remove kan, you still get a correct negative sentence, but it’s a bit less clearly “habitual”:

Baba ba ya cin abinci danye = Baba does not eat raw food (general statement; context decides if it’s about habit, current time, etc.).

So kan is not strictly required for grammaticality, but it adds the nuance of habit / usual behavior.

Does ba ya kan ci mean “never eats” or just “doesn’t usually eat”?

ba ya kan ci by itself is closer to “doesn’t usually eat / doesn’t tend to eat”.

If you want to express “never” in Hausa, a much stronger, more explicit way is:

Baba ba ya taɓa cin abinci danye
(“Baba never eats raw food at all.”)

So roughly:

ba ya kan ci → he generally doesn’t / as a rule doesn’t.
ba ya taɓa ci → he never ever does this.

I thought Hausa negation was ba … ba. Why is there only one ba here?

The “full” textbook pattern is often shown as ba … ba, for example:

Baba ba ya cin abinci danye ba.

However, in everyday spoken Hausa (and in a lot of writing), the second ba is very often dropped, especially:

in main clauses where the meaning is clear,
when another clause follows,
in informal style.

So all of these are possible, with slightly different levels of formality/emphasis:

Baba ba ya cin abinci danye.
Baba ba ya cin abinci danye ba.
Baba ba ya kan ci abinci danye.
Baba ba ya kan ci abinci danye ba.

Your sentence is a natural spoken-style form that just uses the first ba.

Could we also say Baba baya cin abinci danye instead of Baba ba ya kan ci abinci danye? What’s the difference?

Yes, Baba baya cin abinci danye is also correct. The differences:

Baba baya cin abinci danye
– plain negation of eat in the imperfective; often understood as a general fact “He doesn’t eat raw food.”
Baba ba ya kan ci abinci danye
– explicitly habitual; “He doesn’t generally / as a rule eat raw food.”

In normal conversation, both will often be understood as talking about his habit, but kan makes that habitual meaning clearer.

What does abinci danye literally mean, and where does the adjective go in Hausa?

Literally:

abinci = food
danye = raw (uncooked)

In Hausa, adjectives normally follow the noun they describe:

abinci danye = raw food
abinci mai zafi = hot food
abinci mai daɗi = tasty/delicious food

So abinci danye is exactly “food raw” in structure, but idiomatically “raw food.”

In ci abinci, is abinci necessary? Doesn’t ci itself already mean “to eat”?

Yes, ci means “to eat”, so in some contexts you can use ci alone:

Zan ci. = I will eat. (object understood from context)

However, Hausa very often says ci abinci (“eat food”), especially when introducing the idea without any specific dish in mind:

Yana son cin abinci. = He likes to eat / He likes eating (food).
Suna ci abinci. = They are eating (a meal).

So ci abinci is a very natural and common collocation, like saying “eat food / have a meal” in English, even though strictly speaking ci already means “eat.”

What does yana so literally mean here? Is it “he wants” or “he likes”?

yana so comes from:

ya = he
na (as part of yana) = imperfective/progressive marker
so = want/like/love

Depending on context, so can mean:

want
- Yana so a dafa komai sosai. = He wants everything to be cooked well.
like
- Yana son abinci danye. = He likes raw food.
love (especially with people)
- Yana son mahaifiyarsa. = He loves his mother.

Here, yana so a dafa komai sosai is best read as “he wants (people) to cook everything well,” but it also implies that this is how he likes it.

Grammatically, what is a dafa? Who is actually doing the cooking?

a dafa is a very important structure:

dafta / dafa = to cook
a here is an impersonal / passive-like subject marker used in subordinate clauses.

It roughly means “(that) it be cooked / that people cook it” without saying exactly who “people” are.

So:

yana so a dafa komai sosai ≈
“He wants everything to be cooked well”
or “He wants people to cook everything well.”

No specific subject (like “they/we/she”) is mentioned; a keeps it impersonal, similar to English “one/people/they” or to a passive.

Why is it a dafa komai sosai and not a dafa shi sosai?

In this sentence:

komai = everything (all the food he might eat)
shi = it/him (3rd singular masculine pronoun)

If you said:

yana so a dafa shi sosai

you would usually be referring to one specific masculine noun already mentioned (for example, a specific dish: shinkafa can be feminine though, tuwon shinkafa is masculine, etc.).

Here, the speaker wants to talk about everything, not just one earlier-mentioned item, so komai is the natural choice:

yana so a dafa komai sosai
= he wants everything (he eats) to be well cooked.

You could say yana so a dafa masa komai sosai (“he wants them to cook everything well for him”), but komai still has to appear to give the meaning “everything.”

What exactly does komai mean here, and how is it different from duk abinci or duk komai?

In this context:

komai = “everything / anything (in general)”
→ a dafa komai sosai = cook everything well.

Compared to similar expressions:

duk abinci = all the food
- Yana so a dafa duk abinci sosai. = He wants all the food to be well cooked.
  (quite close in meaning here)
duk komai = literally “everything everything / absolutely everything” (a bit emphatic or redundant in many contexts; more natural is just komai).

So:

komai by itself is the normal, simple way to say “everything” here.

What does sosai add? Is it more like “very” or like “well”?

sosai is an intensifier that often means “very / really / thoroughly / a lot”, depending on what you’re modifying.

With adjectives:
- zafi sosai = very hot
- daɗi sosai = very tasty
With verbs/actions, like here:
- a dafa komai sosai = cook everything very well / thoroughly.

So in your sentence, sosai emphasizes how it’s cooked: well done, fully cooked, thoroughly cooked, not half-done.

In the second clause, why is it just yana so a dafa… and not Baba yana so a dafa…? How do we know yana still refers to Baba?

Hausa often does not repeat the full noun subject when it’s clear from context who you’re talking about. The flow is:

Baba ba ya kan ci abinci danye,
→ we are talking about Baba.
yana so a dafa komai sosai.
→ the subject is still he = Baba (understood from the previous clause).

You could say:

Baba ba ya kan ci abinci danye, Baba yana so a dafa komai sosai.

but repeating Baba is unnecessary and sounds heavier. Using the pronoun form (ya / yana) to continue talking about the same person is completely normal and expected in Hausa.

Is Baba here a common noun “father” or more like a name “Dad”?

Baba can function in both ways:

Common noun: “father” (often older male, father, or even grandfather depending on context and region).
- Baba na = my father.
As a kind of name/title: like Dad in English, used as what you call your father, or as a respectful title for an older man.

In your sentence:

Baba ba ya kan ci abinci danye…

it is natural to understand it as “Dad / Father doesn’t usually eat raw food…”, i.e., speaking about a specific known person, often the speaker’s father. Context would make it clear.

Could you rephrase the whole sentence in a simpler or more explicit way in Hausa?

Two very natural rephrasings are:

Emphasizing “doesn’t like raw food”:

Baba baya son cin abinci danye; yana so a dafa abinci sosai.
= Dad doesn’t like eating raw food; he wants food to be cooked well.

Adding “for him” explicitly:

Baba ba ya kan cin abinci danye; yana so a dafa masa komai sosai.
= Dad doesn’t usually eat raw food; he wants everything to be cooked well for him.

Both keep the same basic meaning but use slightly more common beginner‑friendly patterns (baya son…, a dafa masa…) while preserving the idea of well‑cooked food only.