Mun kewaye unguwa.

we

Breakdown of Mun kewaye unguwa.

• unguwa: the neighbourhood
• kewaye: to surround; go around

Questions & Answers about Mun kewaye unguwa.

What does mun mean, and why isn’t it just mu?

Mun is the Hausa subject marker for we in the completed/perfective form.

So in this sentence, mun means something like we plus the idea that the action is viewed as completed.

Why not mu? Because mu is the basic pronoun we/us, but Hausa usually uses special subject forms in ordinary verbal sentences. Compare:

• mun ... = we did / we have done
• muna ... = we are doing / we do
• za mu ... = we will do

So Mun kewaye unguwa is the normal way to say this with a completed action.

What tense is this sentence?

More exactly, it is in the perfective/completed aspect.

In English, that often gets translated as:

• we surrounded ...
• we went around ...
• we have surrounded ...

The best English tense depends on context. Hausa often focuses more on whether the action is completed than on choosing a tense in the same way English does.

What is the basic word order here?

The pattern is:

subject marker + verb + object

So here:

• Mun = subject marker, we
• = verb