Breakdown of Ni ina son in karanta labarai a jarida.
Questions & Answers about Ni ina son in karanta labarai a jarida.
Hausa often uses two different “I” words together, but they are not doing the same job.
- Ni is an independent/emphatic pronoun: “I / me (as for me)”.
- ina is a subject pronoun that carries tense/aspect: “I am (doing)”.
So:
- Ina son in karanta labarai a jarida. = I like to read news in a newspaper.
- Ni ina son in karanta labarai a jarida. = Me, I like to read news in a newspaper. (emphasis on I, maybe in contrast to others)
You can safely drop Ni in neutral statements. It is there mainly for emphasis or contrast.
The base verb so covers several ideas that English splits up:
- love / be fond of
- like
- want / desire
In this sentence, ina son could be understood as:
- I like to read news in a newspaper
- I love reading news in a newspaper
- I want to read news in a newspaper
The most natural reading in many contexts here is closer to “I like” or “I enjoy”, but if you were, for example, expressing a current wish (“Right now I want to read the news in a newspaper”), then “I want” would also fit.
Context decides which English verb sounds best.
So is the basic verb “to like / love / want”.
When it’s used in this “I like X” construction, it typically appears as son.
You can think of son as a noun-like form of the verb “so”, roughly “liking / love / desire”. Literally:
- ina son… ≈ “I am in a state of desire for…” → “I like / I want…”
This is normal in Hausa: some verbs have a special form when they appear in this kind of construction. As a learner, it’s enough to remember that the everyday pattern is:
- ina son + [thing / action] = I like / I want [thing / action]
No. in here is not the preposition “in”. It’s a subjunctive subject marker meaning roughly “that I should / for me to”.
- ina son in karanta… ≈ “I like/want that I (should) read…” → “I like / want to read…”
Some patterns (for different persons) look like this:
- ina son in karanta – I like/want to read
- kana son ka karanta – you (m.sg.) like/want to read
- yana son ya karanta – he likes/wants to read
So in here simply marks “I” as the subject of karanta in this type of “want/like to do X” clause. It is not related to the English preposition “in” at all.
Yes, many speakers do say:
- Ina son karanta labarai a jarida.
In everyday spoken Hausa this is very common and is usually understood as “I like to read news in a newspaper.”
However:
- Including in (Ina son in karanta…) is often considered clearer and more standard, especially in careful speech or writing.
- As a learner, using in after son
- verb is a good habit, because it shows you understand the “I want/like to do X” structure.
In Hausa, person and tense are carried mainly by the subject pronouns, not by changing the verb ending.
Compare:
- Ina karanta labarai. – I am reading news.
- Sun karanta labarai. – They read / have read news.
In both cases, the verb form is karanta, and the difference (I vs. they, present vs. completed) is mostly shown by ina vs. sun.
In the sentence:
- Ni ina son in karanta labarai a jarida.
the “I” part is already in in (subjunctive I marker), so karanta stays in its base form:
- in karanta – that I (should) read / to read
So: in Hausa you normally don’t add endings like English read / reads / reading; instead you choose the right subject pronoun (ina, ya, suka, in, ka, etc.) and keep the verb form quite stable.
- labari = a story, a piece of news, a report (singular)
- labarai = stories, news items, reports (plural)
When Hausa speakers talk about “the news” in general (as you’d read in a paper, watch on TV, etc.), they normally use the plural:
- labarai ≈ “news” (in the general sense)
So:
- karanta labarai = “read news / read news stories”
Using labari here (karanta labari) would sound more like “read a (single) story / single report”, not “read the news” as a general activity.
a jarida by itself can mean either:
- in a newspaper
- in the newspaper
Hausa does not have definite and indefinite articles like “the” and “a/an” in English. Context usually tells you whether the speaker means a specific newspaper or just any newspaper.
If you want to be more explicit, you can add other words:
- a wata jarida – in a (certain) newspaper / in one newspaper
- a jaridar nan – in this newspaper
- a jaridar da na saba karantawa – in the newspaper that I usually read
But in many normal situations, a jarida is enough, and the listener will interpret it correctly from context.
These forms mainly differ in tense/aspect and sometimes in focus:
ina son – present/progressive or general preference
- I like / I love / I (usually) want
- Ni ina son in karanta labarai… – Me, I (generally) like to read news…
na so – perfective/past (and can be used in focus structures)
- I liked / I wanted (at some time, completed)
- Na so in karanta labarai. – I wanted to read the news (but maybe didn’t / at some past point).
Ni na so can also be a focus construction:
- Ni ne na so… / Ni na so… – It was me who wanted… (as opposed to someone else)
For the simple idea of “I like / I want (now)”, ina son is the ordinary choice.
To talk about the habit itself, without emphasizing liking or wanting, you usually use a form of “read” directly, not “like/want to read”.
Two common options are:
Ina karanta labarai a jarida.
- I read / I am reading news in a newspaper.
- Often understood as a current or general activity.
Ni kan karanta labarai a jarida.
- I usually / I tend to read news in a newspaper.
- kan is a particle that marks a habitual action.
Your original sentence:
- Ni ina son in karanta labarai a jarida.
emphasizes the liking/wanting: I like / I want to read news in a newspaper. If you want to stress the routine habit instead, use karanta as the main verb, as in the two examples above.