Wolofal is a derivation of the
Arabic script for writing the
Wolof language
Wolof (; Wolofal: ) is a language of Senegal, Mauritania, and the Gambia, and the native language of the Wolof people. Like the neighbouring languages Serer language, Serer and Fula language, Fula, it belongs to the Senegambian languages, Senegam ...
. It is basically the name of a
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, M ...
n
Ajami script as used for that language.
Wolofal was the first script for writing Wolof. Although the Latin alphabet is the official script of the language in today's Senegal, Wolofal is still used by many people as a symbol of Islamic Wolof culture.
In the traditional, non-standardized orthography, a three-dot diacritic is added to د to represent /nd/; to ج to represent /c, ɲ, ɲɟ/; to ك to represent /ŋ, g, ŋg/; and to ب to represent /p, mb/.
The short vowel marks of Arabic are written systematically, but /a,ə/, /i,e,ɛ/ and /u,o,ɔ/ are not distinguished from one another.
Bibliography
* Mamadou Cissé: ''« Graphical borrowing and African realities »'' in Revue du Musée National d'Ethnologie d'Osaka, Japan, June 2000.
* Mamadou Cissé: ''« Écrits et écritures en Afrique de l'Ouest »'' in Sud Langue
June 2006.
PanAfriL10n Wolof
Languages of the Gambia
Arabic alphabets
Writing systems of Africa
Wolof language
{{senegambian-lang-stub