Questions & Answers about Zinariya tana da tsada.
What does each word in Zinariya tana da tsada mean?
A helpful word-by-word breakdown is:
- Zinariya = gold
- tana = it is / it has in a feminine singular form
- da = with / having
- tsada = high price / expensiveness
So the whole sentence literally comes out something like Gold has expensiveness, which is how Hausa expresses Gold is expensive here.
Why is tana there if Zinariya is already the subject?
Because that is a normal Hausa sentence pattern. Even when you name the subject with a full noun like Zinariya, Hausa still usually uses a matching subject marker before the rest of the predicate.
So Zinariya tana... is not seen as unnecessary repetition. It is standard grammar.
Why is it tana and not yana?
Because zinariya is grammatically feminine in Hausa. Hausa nouns belong to gender classes, and the agreement word has to match that gender.
So:
- feminine singular noun → tana
- masculine singular noun → yana
This is grammatical gender, not biological sex. Even things like gold can be grammatically feminine.