Suya Meaning: One Word, Three Languages

What does suya mean?

It depends on the language. In Nigerian English and Hausa, suya is thin meat coated in a peanut-based spice called yaji and grilled on skewers over charcoal. In Spanish, suya is the feminine form of suyo, meaning his, hers, its, yours or theirs. In Turkish, suya is "to the water", from su, water.

What is suya in English?

For the food, English has no single word, so suya is used as it is. If you need to describe it, "spicy Nigerian grilled meat skewers" is close, and people sometimes say "Nigerian kebab". For the Spanish word, the English is his, hers, its, yours or theirs, chosen from the sentence around it.

The food keeps its own name in English because nothing else fits: kebab, satay and barbecue are all near it, but none of them has the thin slices, the peanut spice or the habit of grilling twice. Our page on what suya is explains the dish, and how suya and kebab differ.

The Spanish word is harder to translate, because Spanish uses the same form for several people. "Es suya" can mean "it is his", "it is hers", "it is yours" (speaking politely to one person, or to several) or "it is theirs", and only the context says which.

Where does the Nigerian word suya come from?

Suya comes from the north of Nigeria, where Hausa is widely spoken, and the food and its name spread south and across West Africa. The seller is the mai suya; Wikipedia glosses mai as the Hausa word for "seller of". Tsire is another name for suya, and in Cameroon it is called soya.

Saveur and Serious Eats both trace the dish to northern Nigeria. Today it is eaten across the country, from Kano and Abuja to the night grills of Lagos, and wherever Nigerians live abroad. Our page on the mai suya explains the seller's name and why suya is so often a night food.

What does "la suya" mean in Spanish?

It is a Spanish possessive pronoun: "his", "hers", "its", "yours" or "theirs", standing in for a feminine noun already mentioned. "Mi casa es pequeña, la suya es grande" means "My house is small, hers (or his, yours, theirs) is big". With a masculine noun it becomes "el suyo".

The forms follow the noun owned, not the owner: suyo for masculine, suya for feminine, suyos and suyas for the plurals. So her house (la casa) and his idea (la idea) both take suya, but her car (el coche) takes suyo. The Real Academia Española lists suyo, suya as the possessive of the third person, used also for "usted" and "ustedes".

"Suya" also appears after a noun without "la": "una amiga suya" is "a friend of his" (or hers, or yours). And in songs and series titles, "soy suya" means "I am his" or "I am hers".

What does "la culpa es suya" mean?

"La culpa es suya" means "it is his fault", "it is her fault", "it is your fault" (said politely) or "it is their fault": culpa is fault or blame, a feminine noun, so the possessive is suya. "Todo es culpa suya" means "it is all his fault" or "it is all her fault", depending on who is being talked about.

The same pattern works with mine and yours: "la culpa es mía" (it is my fault), "la culpa es tuya" (it is your fault, said to a friend), "la culpa es nuestra" (it is our fault). Only "suya" covers several people at once, which is why a reader often needs the sentence before it to know whose fault is meant.

Todo es culpa suya: "it is all his fault"

"Todo" means "all" or "everything", so the phrase puts the whole blame on one person: "it is all her fault", or "it is all your fault" when said politely to someone. The word order can change without changing the meaning: "la culpa de todo es suya" says the same thing.

What does "la suya y la mía son lo mismo" mean?

It is the Spanish translation of a famous line from Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights, in which Catherine says of Heathcliff: "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." In Spanish it reads "De lo que sea que estén hechas las almas, la suya y la mía son lo mismo".

Here suya is "his" (his soul, el alma, which takes la in this phrase) and "la mía" is "mine". It is a good example of how one Spanish word covers several English ones: the same sentence about a woman would read exactly the same. The line is often shared as a love quote, sometimes with "están" in place of "estén".

Ahora soy suya: "now I am his"

"Soy suya" means "I am his" or "I am hers", and "ahora soy suya" is "now I am his". It turns up in Spanish titles of romance series, including dubbed Chinese dramas, where it carries the same possessive sense, never the Nigerian one.

Culpa suya, on its own

"Culpa suya" without "la" or "es" is just "his fault", "her fault" or "your fault", used as a short reply or after another word: "fue culpa suya" (it was his fault), "no fue culpa suya" (it was not your fault).

What does suya mean in Turkish?

In Turkish, suya is the dative of su, water: "to the water" or "into the water". Turkish adds -a or -e to show direction, and a y between two vowels, so su becomes suya. "Suya gitmek" is to go to the water; a riddle, a song or a prayer can all use it.

So a Turkish search with "suya" in it is about water, not food. If that is what brought you here, a Turkish dictionary will serve you better than this page, though you are welcome to stay for the grill.

How do you pronounce suya?

Much the same in all three languages: two syllables, "soo-yah". In Nigeria and in Spanish the stress falls on the first, "SOO-yah", and the Spanish u is a pure "oo" with the y like an English y. In Turkish the stress usually falls on the ending instead, "soo-YAH", as it does on most Turkish words.

Is there a game called Mai Suya?

Yes. Mai Suya means "suya seller", and it is the name of this site's free browser game, about the Nigerian food, not the Spanish word. You run a roadside suya grill in Lagos at night, keep the charcoal hot, flip each skewer before it burns and serve the queue. It plays on a phone with no download.

There are nine meats to grill, from beef and chicken to liver, gizzard and kidney, and five places in Lagos to move your stall to. If you came here for the Spanish word, this is the other suya: a minute of play shows you what Nigerians mean by the word better than any definition.