Learn Hardcore Hausa: Malami yana so mu je laburare mu yi bincike kafin mu rubuta rahoto. - The teacher wants us to go to the library and do research before we write a report.

Hausa does not use articles like “the” or “a/an” the way English does. A bare noun can be understood as definite or indefinite depending on context.

Malami can mean “a teacher” or “the teacher”.
laburare can mean “a library” or “the library”.
rahoto can mean “a report” or “the report”.

In this sentence, context (a specific teacher giving instructions) makes Malami naturally understood as “the teacher”, even though there is no separate word for “the”.

What exactly does “yana so” mean, and why isn’t it just “ya so”?

Both are built from so (“to want / to like”), but they differ in aspect:

ya so = he wanted / he liked (completed action, past-like or perfective).
yana so = he wants / he likes (ongoing, present, or habitual — progressive/imperfective).

In this sentence, the teacher’s wanting is current or general, so yana so = “(he) wants” fits better than ya so = “(he) wanted”.

What are the pieces inside “yana so”? Is it one word or two?

Grammatically it’s built from three elements:

ya – 3rd person masculine singular subject pronoun (“he”),
na – progressive/imperfective marker (“is/are doing”),
so – the verb-noun “to want / to like”.

Spoken together, ya na is pronounced and usually written as yana, so:

ya + na + so → yana so
literally: “he is wanting” → in English: “he wants / he would like”.

So yana so mu je… literally is “he is wanting that we go…”, which we translate naturally as “the teacher wants us to go…”.

Why is mu used here instead of something like “us”, and what does mu je literally mean?

mu is the 1st person plural subject pronoun in Hausa = “we”.

In Hausa, after verbs like so (“to want”), the next verb phrase keeps its own subject pronoun:

mu je = “we go” (subjunctive: “that we go / let’s go”),
mu yi = “we do”,
mu rubuta = “we write”.

So yana so mu je… is literally “he wants we go…”, which English turns into “he wants us to go…”.
Hausa keeps mu as a subject, not an object like English “us”.

Why is mu repeated before je, yi, and rubuta? Couldn’t it just appear once?

In Hausa, when you have a series of verbs sharing the same subject in this kind of purpose/subjunctive structure, you normally repeat the subject pronoun before each verb:

mu je laburare, mu yi bincike, kafin mu rubuta rahoto
= that we go to the library, (that we) do research, before (we) write the report.

If you drop mu, the sentence becomes ungrammatical or at least very awkward. Each verb in the chain needs its own subject marker, even if the subject is the same.

What form of the verb is je here, and why not tafi for “go”?

je and tafi are closely related “go” verbs but used in different patterns.

je is the subjunctive / imperative stem:
- mu je = “let’s go / that we go”
- ka je = “(you) go!”
tafi is more often used in the perfective/completed sense:
- ya tafi = “he went / he has gone”

Because this sentence is about what the teacher wants us to do (in the future), Hausa uses the subjunctive:

mu je laburare = “that we go to the library / let’s go to the library”,

so je, not tafi, is the appropriate form.

How does laburare work here? Why is there no preposition like “to” before it?

laburare is a noun meaning “laboratory / (in many school contexts) library”, borrowed from English “laboratory”. With je “go”, Hausa often omits a separate ‘to’:

mu je laburare = literally “we go laboratory” = “we go to the laboratory/library”.

You can say mu je zuwa laburare (“we go to the laboratory”), but everyday speech commonly drops zuwa, and the meaning “to” is understood from je + a place noun.

What does “yi bincike” literally mean, and why do we need yi there?

bincike is a noun meaning “research, investigation, inquiry”.
yi is the verb “to do / to make”.

Together, yi bincike is a very common light-verb construction:

yi bincike = “do research / carry out an investigation”.

So mu yi bincike = “that we do research / that we carry out research”.
You usually don’t use bincike alone as a verb; you combine it with yi.

What does kafin do in this sentence, and why is the verb after it also mu rubuta (subjunctive form)?

kafin means “before” and introduces a time clause:

kafin mu rubuta rahoto = “before we write (a/the) report”.

After kafin, Hausa typically uses a subjunctive-like verb form with its subject pronoun:

mu rubuta (“we write”) rather than something like mun rubuta (“we wrote”).

That is why the pattern is:

… mu yi bincike kafin mu rubuta rahoto
= “… we do research before we write the report.”

The subjunctive after kafin matches the fact that the action (writing) is future/anticipated relative to the time being discussed.

There’s no word for “and” between mu je laburare and mu yi bincike. How is the “and” meaning expressed?

Hausa often links actions in sequence by simply putting one clause after another with the subject pronoun repeated, without using a separate word like “and”:

mu je laburare mu yi bincike
literally: “we go (to) the library, we do research”.

In English we normally add “and”:
“… that we go to the library and do research …”.

So the “and” idea is carried by the serial placement of clauses with repeated mu, rather than by a specific conjunction.

Can I move the kafin clause to the beginning, like in English “Before we write the report, the teacher wants us to go…”?

You can front the kafin-clause in Hausa, though it may sound a bit heavier in everyday speech. For example:

Kafin mu rubuta rahoto, Malami yana so mu je laburare mu yi bincike.

This is acceptable and means the same thing:

“Before we write the report, the teacher wants us to go to the library and do research.”

So kafin-clauses can appear either:

after the main clause (as in the original sentence), or
before it, for emphasis or style.