Fankar tana aiki.

A natural breakdown is:

• fankar = the fan
• tana = it is for a feminine singular subject
• aiki = work / working / functioning

So the sentence is literally close to The fan, it is working.

Fanka is the basic noun, meaning fan.
Fankar has the definite ending -r, so it means the fan.

That -r ending is very common with feminine nouns in Hausa when they are definite.

In Hausa, a full sentence like this normally needs the subject marker after the noun. So even though fankar already tells you the subject, Hausa still uses tana.

That means the structure is more like:

• Fankar = the fan
• tana aiki = it is working

This is very normal in Hausa. English does not do this in the same way, so it often feels unusual to learners at first.

Because fanka is treated as a feminine singular noun in Hausa.

So:

• tana = she/it is for feminine singular
• yana = he/it is for masculine singular

Since fankar is feminine, tana is the correct form.

It can refer to she, but it can also refer to a feminine noun, including an object.

So in this sentence, tana does not mean a female person. It means it is, referring back to fankar.

This is one place where Hausa grammatical gender works differently from English.

Aiki basically means work or activity.

In this sentence, with tana, it means that the fan is:

• working
• functioning
• running

So Fankar tana aiki can be understood as The fan is working or The fan is functioning.

Hausa does not always use a separate word that matches English is.

Here, the idea of the subject plus ongoing action is carried by tana, and aiki gives the idea of working / functioning.

So you should not expect Hausa to copy English word-for-word. The sentence is grammatical and complete as it stands.

Yes, depending on context.

Most often, by itself, learners will understand it as:

• The fan is working
• The fan is functioning

But in the right context, it can also have a more general sense like The fan works.

Context usually makes the intended meaning clear.

A simple pronunciation guide is:

FAN-kar TAH-na AI-kee

A few helpful notes:

• fan sounds much like English fan
• the r in fankar is usually light, not heavily pronounced
• ta in tana sounds like tah
• ai in aiki sounds like eye
• ki sounds like kee

Hausa spelling is generally quite regular, so once you learn the sound system, reading gets easier.

Yes. Tana aiki can also mean she is working.

For example:

• Amina tana aiki = Amina is working

So the phrase itself is not only for machines. In Fankar tana aiki, it simply refers to the feminine noun fankar.

Yes, that is a very helpful way to think about it.

Hausa often uses:

• a noun subject first
• then the matching subject marker
• then the rest of the predicate

So Fankar tana aiki is structurally close to:

The fan, it is working

That literal view can help you understand the grammar, even if you would not translate it that way in natural English.