Sufuri yana da muhimmanci.

Transport is important.

Breakdown of Sufuri yana da muhimmanci.

• da: to have
• muhimmanci: the importance
• ya: he/it
• sufuri: the transport; transportation

Questions & Answers about Sufuri yana da muhimmanci.

Why does the sentence have both sufuri and yana? Isn't that a bit like saying transport, it...?

Yes, that is a good way to think about it. In Hausa, it is normal for a full noun subject to be followed by an agreeing subject form in the predicate. So sufuri yana... is structurally like transport, it... in a very literal gloss.

Here, yana agrees with sufuri and is an important part of the sentence pattern.

What does yana mean here?

For a learner, the simplest explanation is that yana is the masculine singular agreeing form used here with sufuri.

It tells you that the subject is:

• third person: he/it
• singular
• masculine in grammatical gender

So in this sentence, yana is basically the it-part of it has importance.

Why is it yana and not tana?

Because sufuri takes masculine singular agreement here.

In Hausa, nouns have grammatical gender, and that includes many inanimate nouns. So even though transport is not biologically male or female, Hausa still treats it grammatically as masculine in this sentence.

That is why you get:

• yana for masculine singular not
• tana for feminine singular