When to use it
Use it to check whether guests or relatives you were expecting arrived.
The sentence in English — “Did they arrive last night?”
In “Did they arrive last night?” ‘Did’ carries the past and ‘arrive’ stays in base form.
- Did
- auxiliary verbdo · tense: past · auxiliary that makes a question in the past
- they
- pronounpersonal pronoun, third person plural
- arrive
- verbarrive · form: base form (infinitive without "to") · after "did" the verb stays in its base form
- last
- adjectiveadjective; "last night" means the night before today
- night
- nounnoun
The sentence in Hausa — “Shin sun iso jiya da dare?”
In “Shin sun iso jiya da dare?” the past is in the pronoun ‘sun’ (they, completive), not in the verb: ‘iso’ (arrive) does not change. ‘jiya da dare’ (yesterday at night) is last night.
- Shin
- particleopens the question
- sun
- pronoun'they', completive
- iso
- verbiso · aspect: completive · 'arrive (here)'
- jiya
- adverb'yesterday'
- da
- preposition'at, by'
- dare
- noun'night'; jiya da dare = last night
English × Hausa — What changes from one language to the other
English needs a separate ‘did’; Hausa marks the past in the subject pronoun.
Example conversation
— Shin sun iso jiya da dare?
— Did they arrive last night?
— Eh, kusan tsakar dare; bas ɗin ya yi jinkiri.
— Yes, around midnight; the bus was late.