Tunga

Expressing "need; must" with Fo X ka

In the video, we hear the following:

Fo i ka gwɛlɛnman ye ka sɔrɔ ka na à nɔgɔman ye.

"You must see the difficult and then come to see the easy"

(as in, "You must encounter what is difficult before you encounter what is easy")

Within this longer sentence, there is a simple grammatical construction that you can see more easily if we boil things down:

Fo i ka gwɛlɛnman ye

"You must see the difficult [things]"

or

"You have to see the difficult [things]"

Here, you can see a special construction using the grammatical words fo and ka that can be used to express of "must", "need" or "got to".

(NOTE: In French, Fo X ka is the equivalent of "Il faut que X".)

The basic structure is fo + SUBJECT + ka + VERB. For instance:

Fo n ka warimisɛn ɲini

"I must seek / look for change"

(as in, "I've got to find some change")

In this case, ka is generally analyzed as being the same predicate marker ka that one uses in optative/subjunctive construction like An ka taa! (Let's go!) or I ka kalan kɛ (You should study), etc.

You can also change the subject as you wish. For example:

Fo feerekɛlaw ka warimisɛn ɲini!

"The sellers/vendors need to seek money"

Here's another example adapted from the video clip:

Fo i fa ka sira di i ma

"Your father must give you the road"

(as in, "Your dad must give you permission to go")

Fr. "Il faut que ton père te donne la route"

There is no negative equivalent using fo (i.e., that would allow you to say "You mustn't VERB" with fo). You would simply use kana like in an imperative (Kana taa! "Don't go!") or an optative construction (I kana taa! "You mustn't go!").

The idiomatic expression o bɛ à sɔrɔ ("perhaps" etc)

In the video, we hear the following:

I b'à sɔrɔ, cogoya t'à tigi fɛ ɲɔgɔn.

"Perhaps, the person doesn't have means or the like"

Let's boil the sentence down to something simpler using wari instead of cogoya:

I b'à sɔrɔ, wari t'à fɛ

"Perhaps, the person doesn't have money"

Within this sentence is an idiomatic turn of phrase with the verb k'à sɔrɔ ("to obtain sth") that is very common, but can be tricky to translate in one way.

The expression o b'à sɔrɔ of course literally means "That obtains it". As an idiomatic verbal expression, it can often used to express things like:

• "as it happens"
• "it so happened"
• "it turns out"
• "it may be that"
• "it so happened that"
• "perhaps"

(NOTE: If you know French, you find it helpful to think of O b'à sɔrɔ as being close to "il se trouve que" or "il s'est trouvé que", etc.)

The best option or the exact nuance in meaning will depend on the context.

To show you what I mean, here's another example from the "Warimisɛn" video clip:

[…] premier premier, warimisɛnko, à ka nɔgɔn. O b'a sɔrɔ, wari bɛ yan.

[…] originally, the affair of change, it was easy. It so happened, there was money

Let's boil the sentence down again using fɔlɔfɔlɔ instead of the French loanword premier:

Fɔlɔfɔlɔ, o b'à sɔrɔ, wari bɛ yan

"In the past, it so happened, there was money"

In this case, the expression o b'à sɔrɔ suggests an occurrence that certainly happened instead of something like "perhaps" or "maybe".

In other situations, it can read like "perhaps" but in a sequence of events. Like in this proverb:

"N bɛ taa n bɛɛnkɛ ka misiw gɛn", o b'à sɔrɔ: fɛn tɛ i fa fɛ.

(If you say) “I'm going to hunt my uncle's cows.” It may turn out: your father has nothing.

As you can see from the above translation, there can be a nuance of possibility instead of certainty.

Here's a few other more complicated examples that I found through some online searching. I am leaving them for reference; I will not break them down here.

One:

A ka ca a la, nin taamasiɲɛ ninnu caman bɛ ban u yɛrɛ ma, a bɛ kɛ a tigi hakili la ko fosi tɛ a la, nka o bɛ a sɔrɔ bana ma ban.

"Many of these symptoms usually resolve spontaneously, feeling normal, but (it turns out that / as it happens / this doesn’t mean) the disease has not gone away."

Two:

Tuma dɔw la cɛ ni muso dɔw bɛ a ɲini ka den sɔrɔ, nka muso tɛ se ka kɔnɔta. O bɛ a sɔrɔ u fila dɔ la kelen ye kona ye.

"Sometimes a couple tries to have a baby, but the woman cannot get pregnant. It turns out that one of the two is an infertile/childless person."

Three:

Adama ko : ni Ala ye mɔgɔ o mɔgɔ dako ɲɛ nin cogo la , ka i cɛ ɲɛ , o bɛ a sɔrɔ jinɛw ka nɔɔrɔ bɛ i fɛ

"Adama said: ‘If God determines someone’s fortune this way, and makes them beautiful, it may turn out that they have the charm of the jinn."