Yaro ya yi aski kafin biki.

The boy got a haircut before the celebration.

Breakdown of Yaro ya yi aski kafin biki.

• yi: to do
• kafin: before
• yaro: the boy
• biki: the celebration

Questions & Answers about Yaro ya yi aski kafin biki.

Why does the sentence have both Yaro and ya? Doesn’t ya already mean he?

Yes, ya does mean he, but in Hausa this is normal.

With a full subject noun like Yaro (boy), Hausa still usually keeps the matching subject pronoun before the verb. So:

• Yaro = the subject noun
• ya = the subject marker/pronoun that agrees with Yaro

So the pattern is often:

Subject noun + subject pronoun + verb phrase

That means Yaro ya yi aski is structurally normal Hausa, not repetitive in the way it would be in English.

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What exactly does ya yi mean here?

ya yi is made of two parts:

• ya = he in the completive form
• yi = do / make

So literally, ya yi is something like he did.

But in this sentence, yi is part of a very common Hausa pattern where yi combines with a noun to make an action expression. So:

• yi aski = to shave / to get a haircut / to have hair cut

So you should not always translate ya yi word-for-word as just he did. In this sentence, it helps build the whole expression.

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