Wolof (; Wolofal: ) is a language of

Senegal Senegal,; Wolof: ''Senegaal''; Pulaar: 𞤅𞤫𞤲𞤫𞤺𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭 (Senegaali); Arabic: السنغال ''As-Sinighal'') officially the Republic of Senegal,; Wolof: ''Réewum Senegaal''; Pulaar : 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣𞤭 ...

, Mauritania, and

the Gambia The Gambia,, ff, Gammbi, ar, غامبيا officially the Republic of The Gambia, is a country in West Africa. It is the smallest country within mainland AfricaHoare, Ben. (2002) ''The Kingfisher A-Z Encyclopedia'', Kingfisher Publicatio ...

, and the native language of the

Wolof people The Wolof people () are a West African ethnic group found in northwestern Senegal, the Gambia, and southwestern coastal Mauritania. In Senegal, the Wolof are the largest ethnic group (~43.3%), while elsewhere they are a minority. They refer to ...

. Like the neighbouring languages Serer and

Fula Fula may refer to: *Fula people (or Fulani, Fulɓe) *Fula language (or Pulaar, Fulfulde, Fulani) **The Fula variety known as the Pulaar language **The Fula variety known as the Pular language **The Fula variety known as Maasina Fulfulde *Al-Fula ...

, it belongs to the Senegambian branch of the Niger–Congo language family. Unlike most other languages of the Niger-Congo family, Wolof is not a

tonal language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...

. Wolof is the most widely spoken language in Senegal, spoken natively by the Wolof people (40% of the population) but also by most other Senegalese as a second language. Wolof

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...

s vary geographically and between rural and urban areas. The principal dialect of

Dakar Dakar ( ; ; wo, Ndakaaru) (from :wo:daqaar, daqaar ''tamarind''), is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Senegal, largest city of Senegal. The city of Dakar proper has a population of 1,030,594, whereas the population of the Dakar ...

, for instance, is an urban mixture of Wolof, French, and

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

. ''Wolof'' is the standard spelling and may also refer to the Wolof ethnicity or culture. Variants include the older French , , , Gambian Wolof, etc., which now typically refers either to the

Jolof Empire Jolof (french: Djolof or ') may refer to either of * Jolof Empire, a West African successor state to the Mali Empire in modern Senegal Senegal,; Wolof: ''Senegaal''; Pulaar: 𞤅𞤫𞤲𞤫𞤺𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭 (Senegaali); Arabic: السن� ...

or to

jollof rice Jollof (), or jollof rice, is a rice dish from West Africa. The dish is typically made with long-grain rice, tomatoes, onions, spices, vegetables and meat in a single pot, although its ingredients and preparation methods vary across different re ...

, a common West African rice dish. Now-archaic forms include ''Volof'' and ''Olof''. English is believed to have adopted some Wolof

loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because t ...

s, such as '' banana'', via

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

, and in several Caribbean English Creoles meaning "to eat" (compare Seychellois Creole , also meaning "to eat").

Geographical distribution

Wolof is spoken by more than 10 million people and about 40 percent (approximately 5 million people) of Senegal's population speak Wolof as their native language. Increased mobility, and especially the growth of the capital Dakar, created the need for a common language: today, an additional 40 percent of the population speak Wolof as a second or acquired

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

. In the whole region from

to Saint-Louis, and also west and southwest of

Kaolack Kaolack ( ar, كاولاك; wo, Kawlax) is a town of 172,305 people (2002 census) on the north bank of the Saloum River and the N1 road in Senegal. It is the capital of the Kaolack Region, which borders The Gambia to the south. Kaolack is an i ...

, Wolof is spoken by the vast majority of people. Typically when various ethnic groups in Senegal come together in cities and towns, they speak Wolof. It is therefore spoken in almost every regional and departmental capital in Senegal. Nevertheless, the official language of Senegal is French. In

The Gambia The Gambia,, ff, Gammbi, ar, غامبيا officially the Republic of The Gambia, is a country in West Africa. It is the smallest country within mainland AfricaHoare, Ben. (2002) ''The Kingfisher A-Z Encyclopedia'', Kingfisher Publicatio ...

, although about 20–25 percent of the population speak Wolof as a first language, it has a disproportionate influence because of its prevalence in Banjul, the Gambian capital, where 75 percent of the population use it as a first language. Furthermore, in

Serekunda Serekunda (proper: Sayerr Kunda or Sere Kunda, ar, سيريكوندا, sometimes spelled Serrekunda) is the largest urban centre in The Gambia. It is situated close to the Atlantic coast, south-west of the capital, Banjul, and is formed of nine ...

, The Gambia's largest town, although only a tiny minority are ethnic Wolofs, approximately 70 percent of the population speaks or understands Wolof. In Mauritania, about seven percent of the population (approximately 185,000 people) speak Wolof. Most live near or along the Senegal River that Mauritania shares with Senegal.

Classification

Wolof is one of the

Senegambian languages The Senegambian languages, traditionally known as the Northern West Atlantic, or in more recent literature sometimes confusingly as the Atlantic languages, are a branch of Atlantic–Congo languages centered on Senegal, with most languages spoke ...

, which are characterized by

consonant mutation Consonant mutation is change in a consonant in a word according to its morphological or syntactic environment. Mutation occurs in languages around the world. A prototypical example of consonant mutation is the initial consonant mutation of all ...

. It is often said to be closely related to the Fula language because of a misreading by Wilson (1989) of the data in Sapir (1971) that have long been used to classify the Atlantic languages.

Varieties

Senegalese/Mauritanian Wolof and Gambian Wolof are distinct national standards: they use different orthographies and use different languages (French vs. English) as their source for technical loanwords. However, both the spoken and written languages are mutually intelligible.

Lebu Wolof Lebu Wolof (Lebou Oulof) is a language of Senegal Senegal,; Wolof: ''Senegaal''; Pulaar: 𞤅𞤫𞤲𞤫𞤺𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭 (Senegaali); Arabic: السنغال ''As-Sinighal'') officially the Republic of Senegal,; Wolof: ''Réewum Seneg ...

, on the other hand, is incomprehensible with standard Wolof, a distinction that has been obscured because all Lebu speakers are bilingual in standard Wolof.

Orthography and pronunciation

Church of the Pater Noster Mount of Olives, Jerusalem 19

''Note:'' Phonetic transcriptions are printed between square brackets [] following the rules of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The Latin script, Latin orthography of Wolof in

was set by government decrees between 1971 and 1985. The language institute " Centre de linguistique appliquée de Dakar" (CLAD) is widely acknowledged as an authority when it comes to spelling rules for Wolof. The complete alphabet is A, B, C, D, E, Ë, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, Ñ, Ŋ, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, W, X, Y. The letters V and Z are not included in Wolof. Wolof is most often written in this orthography, in which

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

s have a clear one-to-one correspondence to

grapheme In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system. The word ''grapheme'' is derived and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other names of emic units. The study of graphemes is called '' graphemi ...

s. Additionally, two other scripts exist: a traditional

-based transcription of Wolof called Wolofal, which dates back to the pre-colonial period and is still used by many people, and Garay, an

alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...

ic script invented by Assane Faye 1961, which has been adopted by a small number of Wolof speakers. The first syllable of words is

stress Stress may refer to: Science and medicine * Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition * Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...

ed; long vowels are pronounced with more time but are not automatically stressed, as they are in English.

Vowels

The vowels are as follows: There may be an additional low vowel, or this may be confused with orthographic ''à''. All vowels may be long (written double) or short. is written before a long (prenasalized or geminate) consonant (example ''làmbi'' "arena"). When ''é'' and ''ó'' are written double, the accent mark is often only on the first letter. Vowels fall into two harmonizing sets according to ATR: ''i u é ó ë'' are +ATR, ''e o a'' are the −ATR analogues of ''é ó ë''. For example, There are no −ATR analogs of the high vowels ''i u''. They trigger +ATR harmony in suffixes when they occur in the root, but in a suffix, they may be transparent to vowel harmony. The vowels of some suffixes or enclitics do not harmonize with preceding vowels. In most cases following vowels harmonize with them. That is, they reset the harmony, as if they were a separate word. However, when a suffix/clitic contains a high vowel (+ATR) that occurs after a −ATR root, any further suffixes harmonize with the root. That is, the +ATR suffix/clitic is "transparent" to vowel harmony. An example is the negative ''-u-'' in, where harmony would predict ''*door-u-më-léén-fë''. That is, ''I or U'' behave as if they are their own −ATR analogs. Authors differ in whether they indicate vowel harmony in writing, as well as whether they write clitics as separate words.

Consonants

Consonants in word-initial position are as follows:Omar Ka, 1994, ''Wolof Phonology and Morphology'' All simple nasals, oral stops apart from ''q'' and glottal, and the sonorants ''l r y w'' may be geminated (doubled), though geminate ''r'' only occurs in ideophones.Pape Amadou Gaye, ''Practical Cours in / Cours Practique en Wolof: An Audio–Aural Approach.'' (Geminate consonants are written double.) ''Q'' is inherently geminate and may occur in an initial position; otherwise, geminate consonants and consonant clusters, including ''nt, nc, nk, nq'' (), are restricted to word-medial and -final position. In the final place, geminate consonants may be followed by a faint

epenthetic In phonology, epenthesis (; Greek ) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the beginning syllable ('' prothesis'') or in the ending syllable (''paragoge'') or in-between two syllabic sounds in a word. The word ''epent ...

schwa vowel. Of the consonants in the chart above, ''p d c k'' do not occur in the intermediate or final position, being replaced by ''f r s'' and zero, though geminate ''pp dd cc kk'' are common. Phonetic ''p c k'' do occur finally, but only as allophones of ''b j g'' due to final devoicing. Minimal pairs: : ''bët'' ("eye") - ''bëtt'' ("to find") : ''boy'' ("to catch fire") - ''boyy'' ("to be glimmering") : ''dag'' ("a royal servant") - ''dagg'' ("to cut") : ''dëj'' ("funeral") - ''dëjj'' (" cunt") : ''fen'' ("to (tell a) lie") - ''fenn'' ("somewhere, nowhere") : ''gal'' ("white gold") - ''gall'' ("to regurgitate") : ''goŋ'' ("baboon") - ''goŋŋ'' (a kind of bed) : ''gëm'' ("to believe") - ''gëmm'' ("to close one's eyes") : ''Jaw'' (a family name) - ''jaww'' ("heaven") : ''nëb'' ("rotten") - ''nëbb'' ("to hide") : ''woñ'' ("thread") - ''woññ'' ("to count")

Tones

Unlike most sub-Saharan African languages, Wolof has no tones. Other non-tonal languages of sub-Saharan Africa include Amharic, Swahili and

Grammar

Notable characteristics

Pronoun conjugation instead of verbal conjugation

In Wolof, verbs are unchangeable stems that cannot be conjugated. To express different tenses or aspects of an action, personal pronouns are conjugated – not the verbs. Therefore, the term ''temporal pronoun'' has become established for this part of speech. It is also referred to as a focus form. Example: The verb dem means "''to go''" and cannot be changed; the temporal pronoun maa ngi means "''I/me, here and now''"; the temporal pronoun dinaa means "''I am soon / I will soon / I will be soon''". With that, the following sentences can be built now: Maa ngi dem. "''I am going (here and now).''" – Dinaa dem. "''I will go (soon).''"

Conjugation with respect to aspect instead of tense

In Wolof, tenses like present tense, past tense, and future tense are just of secondary importance and play almost no role. Of crucial importance is the aspect of action from the speaker's point of view. The most vital distinction is whether an action is perfective (finished) or imperfective, (still going on from the speaker's point of view), regardless of whether the action itself takes place in the past, present, or future. Other aspects indicate whether an action takes place regularly, whether an action will surely take place and whether an actor wants to emphasize the role of the subject, predicate, or object. As a result, conjugation is done by not tense but aspect. Nevertheless, the term ''temporal pronoun'' is usual for such conjugated pronouns although ''aspect pronoun'' might be a better term. For example, the verb dem means "''to go''"; the temporal pronoun naa means "''I already/definitely''", the temporal pronoun dinaa means "''I am soon / I will soon / I will be soon''"; the temporal pronoun damay means "''I (am) regularly/usually''". The following sentences can be constructed: Dem naa. "''I go already / I have already gone.''" – Dinaa dem. "''I will go soon / I am just going to go.''" – Damay dem. "''I usually/regularly/normally/am about to go.''" A speaker may express that an action absolutely took place in the past by adding the suffix -(w)oon to the verb (in a sentence, the temporal pronoun is still used in a conjugated form along with the past marker): Demoon naa Ndakaaru. "''I already went to Dakar.''"

Action verbs versus static verbs and adjectives

Wolof has two main verb classes: dynamic and

stative According to some linguistics theories, a stative verb is a verb that describes a state of being, in contrast to a dynamic verb, which describes an action. The difference can be categorized by saying that stative verbs describe situations that are ...

. Verbs are not inflected, instead pronouns are used to mark person, aspect, tense, and focus.

Consonant harmony

Gender

Wolof does not mark sexual gender as

grammatical gender In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all noun ...

: there is one pronoun encompassing the English 'he', 'she', and 'it'. The descriptors bu góor (male / masculine) or bu jigéen (female / feminine) are often added to words like ''xarit'', 'friend', and ''rakk'', 'younger sibling' to indicate the person's sex. Markers of noun definiteness (usually called "definite articles") agree with the noun they modify. There are at least ten articles in Wolof, some of them indicating a singular noun, others a plural noun. In Urban Wolof, spoken in large cities like Dakar, the article -bi is often used as a generic article when the actual article is not known. Any loan noun from French or English uses -bi: butik-bi, xarit-bi "the boutique, the friend." Most Arabic or religious terms use -Ji: Jumma-Ji, jigéen-ji, "the mosque, the girl." Four nouns referring to persons use ''-ki/-''ñi:' ''nit-ki, nit-ñi'', 'the person, the people" Plural nouns use ''-yi: jigéen-yi, butik-yi'', "the girls, the boutiques" Miscellaneous articles: "si, gi, wi, mi, li."

Numerals

Cardinal numbers

The Wolof numeral system is based on the numbers "5" and "10". It is extremely regular in formation, comparable to Chinese. Example: benn "''one''", juróom "''five''", juróom-benn "''six''" (literally, "five-one"), fukk "''ten''", fukk ak juróom benn "''sixteen''" (literally, "ten and five one"), ñent-fukk "''forty''" (literally, "four-ten"). Alternatively, "thirty" is fanweer, which is roughly the number of days in a lunar month (literally "fan" is day and "weer" is moon.)

Ordinal numbers

Ordinal numbers (first, second, third, etc.) are formed by adding the ending –éél (pronounced ayl) to the

cardinal number In mathematics, cardinal numbers, or cardinals for short, are a generalization of the natural numbers used to measure the cardinality (size) of sets. The cardinality of a finite set is a natural number: the number of elements in the set. T ...

. For example, two is ñaar and second is ñaaréél The one exception to this system is "first", which is bu njëk (or the adapted French word ''premier'': përëmye)

Personal pronouns

Temporal pronouns

Conjugation of the temporal pronouns

In urban Wolof, it is common to use the forms of the 3rd person plural also for the 1st person plural. It is also important to note that the verb follows specific temporal pronouns and precedes others.

Literature

The

New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chri ...

was translated into Wolof and published in 1987, second edition 2004, and in 2008 with some minor typographical corrections. Boubacar Boris Diop published his novel ''Doomi Golo'' in Wolof in 2002.Encyclopedia of African Literature, p 801 The 1994 song " 7 Seconds" by Youssou N'Dour and Neneh Cherry is partially sung in Wolof.

References

Bibliography

;Linguistics * Harold Torrence: ''The Clause Structure of Wolof: Insights into the Left Periphery''. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, 2013. * Omar Ka: ''Wolof Phonology and Morphology''. University Press of America, Lanham, Maryland, 1994, . * Mamadou Cissé: "Graphical borrowing and African realities" in ''Revue du Musée National d'Ethnologie d'Osaka'', Japan, June 2000. * Mamadou Cissé: ''"Revisiter 'La grammaire de la langue wolof' d'A. Kobes (1869), ou étude critique d'un pan de l'histoire de la grammaire du wolof''.", in Sudlangue
Sudlangues.sn
February 2005 * Leigh Swigart: ''Two codes or one? The insiders' view and the description of codeswitching in Dakar'', in Carol M. Eastman, Codeswitching. Clevedon/Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters, . *Carla Unseth: "Vowel Harmony in Wolof" in ''Occasional Papers in Applied Linguistics. No. 7'', 2009. * Fiona McLaughlin: "Dakar Wolof and the configuration of an urban identity", ''Journal of African Cultural Studies'' 14/2, 2001, p. 153–172 * Gabriele Aïscha Bichler: "Bejo, Curay und Bin-bim? Die Sprache und Kultur der Wolof im Senegal (mit angeschlossenem Lehrbuch Wolof)", ''Europäische Hochschulschriften'' Band 90, Peter Lang Verlagsgruppe, Frankfurt am Main, Germany 2003, . ; Grammar * Pathé Diagne: ''Grammaire de Wolof Moderne''. Présence Africaine, Paris, France, 1971. * Pape Amadou Gaye: ''Wolof: An Audio-Aural Approach''. United States Peace Corps, 1980. * Amar Samb: ''Initiation a la Grammaire Wolof''. Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire, Université de Dakar, Ifan-Dakar, Sénegal, 1983. * Michael Franke: ''Kauderwelsch, Wolof für den Senegal – Wort für Wort''. Reise Know-How Verlag, Bielefeld, Germany 2002, . * Michael Franke, Jean Léopold Diouf, Konstantin Pozdniakov: ''Le wolof de poche – Kit de conversation'' (Phrasebook/grammar with 1 CD). Assimil, Chennevières-sur-Marne, France, 2004 . * Jean-Léopold Diouf, Marina Yaguello: ''J'apprends le Wolof – Damay jàng wolof'' (1 textbook with 4 audio cassettes). Karthala, Paris, France 1991, . * Michel Malherbe, Cheikh Sall: ''Parlons Wolof – Langue et culture''. L'Harmattan, Paris, France 1989, (this book uses a simplified orthography which is not compliant with the CLAD standards; a CD is available). * Jean-Léopold Diouf: ''Grammaire du wolof contemporain''. Karthala, Paris, France 2003, . * Fallou Ngom: ''Wolof''. Verlag LINCOM, Munich, Germany 2003, . * Sana Camara: ''Wolof Lexicon and Grammar'', NALRC Press, 2006, . ; Dictionaries * Diouf, Jean-Leopold: ''Dictionnaire wolof-français et français-wolof'', Karthala, 2003 * Mamadou Cissé: ''Dictionnaire Français-Wolof'', L’Asiathèque, Paris, 1998, * Arame Fal, Rosine Santos, Jean Léonce Doneux: ''Dictionnaire wolof-français (suivi d'un index français-wolof)''. Karthala, Paris, France 1990, . * Pamela Munro, Dieynaba Gaye: ''Ay Baati Wolof – A Wolof Dictionary''. UCLA Occasional Papers in Linguistics, No. 19, Los Angeles, California, 1997. * Peace Corps Gambia: ''Wollof-English Dictionary'', PO Box 582, Banjul, the Gambia, 1995 (no ISBN; this book refers solely to the dialect spoken in the Gambia and does not use the standard orthography of CLAD). * Nyima Kantorek: ''Wolof Dictionary & Phrasebook'', Hippocrene Books, 2005, (this book refers predominantly to the dialect spoken in the Gambia and does not use the standard orthography of CLAD). * Sana Camara: ''Wolof Lexicon and Grammar'', NALRC Press, 2006, . ; Official documents * Government of Senegal, Décret n° 71-566 du 21 mai 1971 relatif à la transcription des langues nationales, modifié par décret n° 72-702 du 16 juin 1972. * Government of Senegal, Décrets n° 75-1026 du 10 octobre 1975 et n° 85-1232 du 20 novembre 1985 relatifs à l'orthographe et à la séparation des mots en wolof. * Government of Senegal, Décret n° 2005-992 du 21 octobre 2005 relatif à l'orthographe et à la séparation des mots en wolof.

External links

*Wolof resource (Mofeko, Tola Akindipe & Joanna Senghore)
Largest online resource to learn Wolof (with Gambian influence)Easy wolof (iPhone application)Wolof Language Resources

Wolof OnlineWolof English Dictionary
(this dictionary mixes Senegalese and Gambian variants without notice, and does not use a standard orthography)
A French-Wolof-French dictionary
partially available at Google Books.
Firicat.com
(an online Wolof to English translator; you can add your own words to this dictionary; it uses almost exclusively the Gambian variants and does not use a standard orthography)
PanAfrican L10n page on WolofOSAD spécialisée dans l’éducation nonformelle et l’édition des Ouvrages en Langues nationales
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wolof Language Senegambian languages Languages of the Gambia Languages of Senegal Languages of Mauritania Wolof people