Breakdown of Iyaye suna koya mana tarbiya mai kyau a gida.
Questions & Answers about Iyaye suna koya mana tarbiya mai kyau a gida.
Suna is the 3rd person plural subject + progressive marker. Roughly, it means "they are".
- Iyaye = parents (they)
- suna = are (doing something) – progressive / ongoing or habitual action
- koya = teach / learn
So Iyaye suna koya… = Parents are teaching… or Parents teach (on a regular basis)…
If you said just Iyaye koya mana tarbiya…, it would be ungrammatical in standard Hausa. The verb normally needs one of these aspect markers (like suna, suna, suna, suna depending on person/number) in this type of sentence.
Suna koya can cover both:
Right now / ongoing:
Context: What are your parents doing these days?
Iyaye suna koya mana tarbiya mai kyau a gida.
→ Our parents are teaching us good manners at home (these days).Habitual / generally true:
Context: What do parents do for their children?
Iyaye suna koya mana tarbiya mai kyau a gida.
→ Parents teach us good manners at home (as a general fact).
Hausa often uses the same progressive form for both ongoing and regular activities; context decides which reading is intended.
Mana is an indirect object pronoun meaning to us / for us.
It comes from ga mu → to us, which fuses into the clitic form mana.
Common forms in this series are:
- mini – to me
- maka / miki – to you (m/f)
- masa / mata – to him / to her
- mana – to us
- muku – to you (pl)
- musu – to them
In this sentence:
- suna koya mana tarbiya… = they teach *us good upbringing / manners…
Literally: they teach **to-us good upbringing…*
So mana marks who receives the teaching.
The normal order is:
Verb + indirect object pronoun + direct object
So:
- suna koya mana tarbiya…
= they teach *to-us upbringing…*
Putting mana after tarbiya (suna koya tarbiya mana) sounds wrong or at best very odd in standard Hausa. The clitic pronoun likes to sit close to the verb.
Koya is indeed used for both teach and learn. The meaning is decided by:
- The objects involved, and
- The prepositions or pronoun forms used.
Some patterns:
X ya koya Y (ga) Z
→ X taught Y to Z
(Iyaye suna koya tarbiya ga yara = Parents teach manners to children)X ya koya Y daga / wurin Z
→ X learned Y from Z
(Na koya Hausa daga malamai = I learned Hausa from teachers)
In Iyaye suna koya mana tarbiya…, we have:
- Iyaye (parents) as subject
- mana (to us) as recipient
- tarbiya (upbringing/manners) as what is being transmitted
Given that parents are the ones giving tarbiya, the only natural reading is teach:
Parents teach us good upbringing/manners…
Tarbiya is a loanword from Arabic and has a broader meaning than just manners:
- upbringing
- moral training
- discipline
- good behavior / good character formation
- how a child is raised
In this sentence, tarbiya mai kyau includes ideas like good manners, good character, proper discipline and moral upbringing. Often, translators pick good manners as a short, natural English equivalent, but it’s a bit richer than that.
Both are correct, but they feel slightly different:
tarbiya mai kyau
- Literally: upbringing that has goodness
- Very common pattern: NOUN + mai kyau = good NOUN
- Neutral, everyday, easy for learners.
kyakkyawar tarbiya
- kyakkyawa = good/beautiful (feminine form; tarbiya is grammatically feminine)
- kyakkyawar tarbiya sounds a bit more formal or descriptive, sometimes with a stronger sense of good, noble upbringing.
In everyday speech tarbiya mai kyau is very common and completely natural.
A is a general locative preposition meaning in, at, on depending on context.
- a gida = at home / in the house
- a makaranta = at school
- a kasuwa = at the market
In Iyaye suna koya mana tarbiya mai kyau a gida, a gida locates the action:
They teach us good upbringing at home.
If you said a cikin gida, it would more literally be inside the house, with a slightly stronger sense of inside. A gida is broader and more neutral.
The structure is:
- Iyaye – Subject (Parents)
- suna – Auxiliary / aspect marker (are [doing])
- koya – Main verb (teach)
- mana – Indirect object pronoun (to us)
- tarbiya mai kyau – Direct object (good upbringing/manners)
- a gida – Locative phrase (at home)
So in more abstract terms:
Subject – Aux – Verb – Indirect Object – Direct Object – Place
This is a very typical Hausa word order pattern.
Yes, you can say:
Suna koya mana tarbiya mai kyau a gida.
That would mean They are teaching us good upbringing at home, with they understood from context.
Hausa often allows dropping the explicit noun subject if the meaning is clear from earlier conversation or situation. The subject agreement in suna already tells you it is they (3rd person plural).
Grammatically, iyaye is plural: parents.
Singular forms are:
- uba – father
- uwa – mother
However, in real usage:
- iyaye can also mean parents in general (as a group, as a concept), not necessarily your own two parents.
- Some speakers may use iyaye loosely when they mean a parent figure or the people who raised you, but strictly speaking it is plural.
In this sentence it’s naturally understood as parents (in general), not just one parent.
Yes, that is also correct, just slightly different grammatically:
koya (wa) – teach (to someone)
- suna koya mana tarbiya… = they teach *to-us upbringing…*
koyar da – causative form, literally cause to learn / teach
- suna koyar da mu tarbiya… = they teach us upbringing…
Differences:
- With koya, you normally use an indirect object pronoun like mana.
- With koyar da, you usually use the regular object pronoun, like mu.
Both sentences are natural:
- Iyaye suna koya mana tarbiya mai kyau a gida.
- Iyaye suna koyar da mu tarbiya mai kyau a gida.
They express practically the same idea in this context.