Uwa tana sa kabeji a cikin miya.

Mother is putting cabbage into the soup.

Breakdown of Uwa tana sa kabeji a cikin miya.

• ne: to be
• uwa: the mother
• miya: the soup
• sa: to put

Questions & Answers about Uwa tana sa kabeji a cikin miya.

Why are both Uwa and tana used? Doesn’t Uwa already tell us who the subject is?

Yes, Uwa already names the subject, but Hausa normally still uses a subject marker before the verb.

So the pattern is:

Uwa + tana + verb

• Uwa = the noun, mother
• tana = a marker that agrees with the subject and shows the verbal aspect

This is very normal in Hausa. English would not repeat the subject this way, but Hausa often does. You can think of it loosely as:

Mother, she is putting cabbage in the soup.

That is not the best English translation, but it helps show the structure.

What exactly does tana mean here?

tana tells you two important things:

1. the subject is third person singular feminine = she
2. the action is in an imperfective / ongoing kind of form

So tana sa here is understood as something like she is putting / she is adding.

This is why the sentence works without a separate Hausa word matching English is.

What does sa mean in this sentence?