Tunga

Intro

In the following video, people in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso respond to my questions about tunga.

The word tunga is a noun that, at its simplest, has at least two senses:

1. foreign land
2. adventure

The two of course are interrelated.

Tunga, in theory, can refer to a place, any place, away from "home" in the broadest sense. It functions therefore similarly to "overseas" or "abroad" in English, but with the nuance that it doesn't necessarily mean that you crossed the sea or that you have left your country necessarily.

Tunga also refers to what West Africans often gloss as "adventure" — that is, the experience of being "away from home" for the purposes of seeking one's forture.

The video is roughly two question segments from Episode 7 of Na baro kè.

Watch

Watch the video without the subtitles. If they are on, click on the little "CC" symbol and turn them off.

Watch and Read

Now turn on the subtitles in Bambara/Jula (click on the little "CC" button) and read along.

If you are lost, you can also switch it into English and then re-watch in Bambara/Jula.

And remember, you can also slow down the video to make it easier to follow along. I recommend 75%. Click on the little gear symbol.

List of Selected Grammar Points

• Expressing "need; must" with Fo X ka
  NOTE: Moved from Warimisɛn
• Using o b'à sɔrɔ to express "it so happens', etc.
  NOTE: Moved from Warimisɛn

Grammar Points Explained

Let's dive into the core grammar points.

Expressing "need; must" with Fo X ka

In the video, we hear the following:

Ni mako donna warimisɛn na, fo i ka wuli ka yaala ka se i sigiɲɔgɔn ma […]

"If you need change, you have got to get up and walk and go up to your neighbor […]"

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

Fo i ka wuli

"You must get up"

or

"You have got to get up"

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".

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"

Using O bɛ à sɔrɔ to express "It turns out", "You will find that", "It may be that", "Perhaps", etc.

In the video, we hear the following:

[…] 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

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.

Let's boil the sentence down to something simpler 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"

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

Try replacing those in our example sentence and see which one you think works best.

(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.)

Here's another example from a 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. As such, in other cases, it might be worth translating o b'à sɔrɔ with other turns of phrase such as:

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 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."

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