Wolof language

Wolof
Native to	Senegal, Gambia, Mauritania
Ethnicity	Wolof
Native speakers	5,454,000 (2001-2016) L2 speakers: ?
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Senegambian Wolof–Nyun Wolof
Writing system	Latin (Wolof alphabet) Arabic (Wolofal)
Official status
Regulated by	CLAD (Centre de linguistique appliquée de Dakar)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	wo
ISO 639-2	wol
ISO 639-3	Either: wol – Wolof wof – Gambian Wolof
Glottolog	wolo1247
Linguasphere	90-AAA-aa
Areas where Wolof is spoken

Wolof (/ˈwoʊlɒf/) is a language of Senegal, the Gambia and Mauritania, and the native language of the Wolof people. Like the neighbouring languages Serer and 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.

Wolof originated as the language of the Lebu people. It 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 dialects vary geographically and between rural and urban areas. "Dakar-Wolof", for instance, is an urban mixture of Wolof, French, and Arabic.

"Wolof" is the standard spelling and may refer to the Wolof people or to Wolof culture. Variants include the older French Ouolof and the principally Gambian Wollof, Jolof, jollof, etc., which now typically refers either to the Jolof Empire or to jollof rice, a common West African rice dish. Now-archaic forms include Volof and Olof.

The English language is believed to have adopted some Wolof words, such as banana, via Spanish or Portuguese, and yum/yummy, from Wolof nyam "to taste"; nyam in several Caribbean English Creoles meaning "to eat" (compare Seychellois Creole nyanmnyanm, also meaning "to eat").

Geographical distribution

States of the Wolof Empire

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. In the whole region from Dakar to Saint-Louis, and also west and southwest of Kaolack, Wolof is spoken by the vast majority of the 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, 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, The Gambia's largest town, although only a tiny minority are ethnic Wolofs, approximately 70 percent of the population speaks and/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, which are characterized by consonant mutation. 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, on the other hand, is unintelligible with standard Wolof, a distinction that has been obscured because all Lebu speakers are bilingual in standard Wolof.

Orthography and pronunciation

Note: Phonetic transcriptions are printed between square brackets [] following the rules of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

The Latin orthography of Wolof in Senegal 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, À, B, C, D, E, É, Ë, F, G, I, J, K, L, M, N, Ñ, Ŋ, O, Ó, P, Q, R, S, T, U, W, X, Y.

Wolof is most often written in this orthography, in which phonemes have a clear one-to-one correspondence to graphemes.

Additionally, two other scripts exist: a traditional Arabic-based transcription of Wolof called Wolofal, which dates back to the pre-colonial period and is still used by many people, and the Garay script, dating to 1961, which has been adopted by a small number of Wolof-speakers

The first syllable of words is stressed; long vowels are pronounced with more time, but are not automatically stressed, as they are in English.

Vowels

The vowels are as follows:

Vowels

	Front		Central		Back
	short	long	short	long	short	long
Close	i ⟨i⟩	iː			u ⟨u⟩	uː
Close-mid	e ⟨é⟩	eː			o ⟨ó⟩	oː
mid			ə ⟨ë⟩
Open-mid	ɛ ⟨e⟩	ɛː			ɔ ⟨o⟩	ɔː
Open			a ⟨a⟩	aː

There may be an additional low vowel, or this may be confusion with orthographic à.

All vowels may be long (written double) or short. /aː/ is written ⟨à⟩ before a long (prenasalized or geminate) consonant. 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,

Lekk-oon-ngeen /lɛkːɔːnŋɡɛːn/

[eat-PAST-FIN.2pl]

'You (plural) ate.'

Dóór-óón-ngéén /doːroːnŋɡeːn/

[hit-PAST-FIN.2pl]

'You (plural) hit.'

There are no −ATR analogues of the high vowels i u. They trigger +ATR harmony in suffixes when they occur in a 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) 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,

Door-u-ma-leen-fa /dɔːrumalɛːnfa/

[begin-NEG-1sg-3pl-LOC]

'I did not begin them there'

where harmony would predict *door-u-më-léén-fë. That is, i u behave as if they are their own −ATR analogues.

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:

Wolof consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal		m ⟨m⟩	n ⟨n⟩	ɲ ⟨ñ⟩	ŋ ⟨ŋ⟩
Prenasalized stop		mb ⟨mb⟩	nd ⟨nd⟩	ɲɟ ⟨nj⟩	ŋɡ ⟨ng⟩
Plosive	voiced	b ⟨b⟩	d ⟨d⟩	ɟ ⟨j⟩	ɡ ⟨g⟩
	voiceless	p ⟨p⟩	t ⟨t⟩	c ⟨c⟩	k ⟨k⟩	qː ⟨q⟩	ʔ
Fricative		f ⟨f⟩	s ⟨s⟩		x~χ ⟨x⟩
Trill			r ⟨r⟩
Approximant		w ⟨w⟩	l ⟨l⟩	j ⟨y⟩

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. (Geminate consonants are written double.) Q is inherently geminate and may occur in initial position; otherwise geminate consonants and consonant clusters, including nt, nc, nk, nq ([ɴq]), are restricted to word-medial and -final position. Of the consonants in the chart above, p d c k do not occur in medial 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 tone. Other non-tonal languages of Africa include Amharic, Swahili and Fula.

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, they play almost no role. Of crucial importance is the aspect of an action from the speaker's point of view. The most important distinction is whether an action is perfective, i.e., finished, or imperfective, i.e., still going on, from the speaker's point of view, regardless 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 take place for sure, and whether an action wants to emphasize the role of the subject, predicate, or object of the sentence. As a result, conjugation is not done by tenses, but by aspects. Nevertheless, the term temporal pronoun became usual for these conjugated pronouns, although aspect pronoun might be a better term.

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". Now 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 absolutely express that an action 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).

Example: Demoon naa Ndakaaru. "I already went to Dakar."

Gender

Wolof does not mark for grammatical gender: 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.)

0	tus / neen / zéro [French] / sero / dara ["nothing"]
1	benn
2	ñaar / yaar
3	ñett / ñatt / yett / yatt
4	ñeent / ñenent
5	juróom
6	juróom-benn
7	juróom-ñaar
8	juróom-ñett
9	juróom-ñeent
10	fukk
11	fukk ak benn
12	fukk ak ñaar
13	fukk ak ñett
14	fukk ak ñeent
15	fukk ak juróom
16	fukk ak juróom-benn
17	fukk ak juróom-ñaar
18	fukk ak juróom-ñett
19	fukk ak juróom-ñeent
20	ñaar-fukk
26	ñaar-fukk ak juróom-benn
30	ñett-fukk / fanweer
40	ñeent-fukk
50	juróom-fukk
60	juróom-benn-fukk
66	juróom-benn-fukk ak juróom-benn
70	juróom-ñaar-fukk
80	juróom-ñett-fukk
90	juróom-ñeent-fukk
100	téeméer
101	téeméer ak benn
106	téeméer ak juróom-benn
110	téeméer ak fukk
200	ñaari téeméer
300	ñetti téeméer
400	ñeenti téeméer
500	juróomi téeméer
600	juróom-benni téeméer
700	juróom-ñaari téeméer
800	juróom-ñetti téeméer
900	juróom-ñeenti téeméer
1000	junni / junne
1100	junni ak téeméer
1600	junni ak juróom-benni téeméer
1945	junni ak juróom-ñeenti téeméer ak ñeent-fukk ak juróom
1969	junni ak juróom-ñeenti téeméer ak juróom-benn-fukk ak juróom-ñeent
2000	ñaari junni
3000	ñetti junni
4000	ñeenti junni
5000	juróomi junni
6000	juróom-benni junni
7000	juróom-ñaari junni
8000	juróom-ñetti junni
9000	juróom-ñeenti junni
10000	fukki junni
100000	téeméeri junni
1000000	tamndareet / million

Ordinal numbers

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

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)

1st	bu njëk
2nd	ñaaréél
3rd	ñettéél
4th	ñeentéél
5th	juróoméél
6th	juróom-bennéél
7th	juróom-ñaaréél
8th	juróom-ñettéél
9th	juróom-ñeentéél
10th	fukkéél

Temporal pronouns

Conjugation of the temporal pronouns

	Situative (Presentative) (Present Continuous)		Terminative (Past tense for action verbs or present tense for static verbs)		Objective (Emphasis on Object)		Processive (Explicative and/or Descriptive) (Emphasis on Verb)		Subjective (Emphasis on Subject)		Neutral
	Perfect	Imperfect	Perfect	Future	Perfect	Imperfect	Perfect	Imperfect	Perfect	Imperfect	Perfect	Imperfect
1st Person singular "I"	maa ngi (I am+ Verb+ -ing)	maa ngiy	naa (I + past tense action verbs or present tense static verbs)	dinaa (I will ... / future)	laa (Puts the emphasis on the Object of the sentence)	laay (Indicates a habitual or future action)	dama (Puts the emphasis on the Verb or the state 'condition' of the sentence)	damay (Indicates a habitual or future action)	maa (Puts the emphasis on the Subject of the sentence)	maay (Indicates a habitual or future action)	ma	may
2nd Person singular "you"	yaa ngi	yaa ngiy	nga	dinga	nga	ngay	danga	dangay	yaa	yaay	nga	ngay
3rd Person singular "he/she/it"	mu ngi	mu ngiy	na	dina	la	lay	dafa	dafay	moo	mooy	mu	muy
1st Person plural "we"	nu ngi	nu ngiy	nanu	dinanu	lanu	lanuy	danu	danuy	noo	nooy	nu	nuy
2nd Person plural "you"	yéena ngi	yéena ngiy	ngeen	dingeen	ngeen	ngeen di	dangeen	dangeen di	yéena	yéenay	ngeen	ngeen di
3rd Person plural "they"	ñu ngi	ñu ngiy	nañu	dinañu	lañu	lañuy	dañu	dañuy	ñoo	ñooy	ñu	ñuy

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 certain temporal pronouns and precedes others.

Literature

The New Testament 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.

The 1994 song "7 Seconds" by Youssou N'Dour and Neneh Cherry is partially sung in Wolof.

See also

• Pidgin Wolof

"Okay" may be Wolof waaw-kay, “yes,” with a suffix of emphasis, becoming “I agree," or "I will comply.” Wolof is reputed to have been a lingua franca among slaves in the USA, and to have had a strong influence on colloquial American English. Significantly, the emergence of “okay” in the vocabulary of Euro-Americans dates from a period when many refugees from Southern slavery were arriving in the North, and this is where the word was first documented. The words banana, jive, dig (meaning "appreciate"), yam and sock (meaning "to hit") are Wolof. It has been suggested that "hep cat" may also be of Wolof origin.

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, ISBN 0-8191-9288-0.
• 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 Sudlangues 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, ISBN 1-85359-167-X.
• 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, ISBN 3-631-39815-8.

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, ISBN 3-89416-280-5.
• 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 ISBN 978-2-7005-4020-8.
• Jean-Léopold Diouf, Marina Yaguello: J'apprends le Wolof – Damay jàng wolof (1 textbook with 4 audio cassettes). Karthala, Paris, France 1991, ISBN 2-86537-287-1.
• Michel Malherbe, Cheikh Sall: Parlons Wolof – Langue et culture. L'Harmattan, Paris, France 1989, ISBN 2-7384-0383-2 (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, ISBN 2-84586-267-9.
• Fallou Ngom: Wolof. Verlag LINCOM, Munich, Germany 2003, ISBN 3-89586-616-4.
• Sana Camara: Wolof Lexicon and Grammar, NALRC Press, 2006, ISBN 978-1-59703-012-0.

Dictionaries

• Diouf, Jean-Leopold: Dictionnaire wolof-français et français-wolof, Karthala, 2003
• Mamadou Cissé: Dictionnaire Français-Wolof, L’Asiathèque, Paris, 1998, ISBN 2-911053-43-5
• Arame Fal, Rosine Santos, Jean Léonce Doneux: Dictionnaire wolof-français (suivi d'un index français-wolof). Karthala, Paris, France 1990, ISBN 2-86537-233-2.
• 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, available as PDF file via the internet; 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, ISBN 0-7818-1086-8 (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, ISBN 978-1-59703-012-0.

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

• Wolof101: Online Wolof Language Lessons https://wolof101.mykajabi.com/
• Easy wolof (IPhone application)
• Wolof Language Resources
• An Annotated Guide to Learning the Wolof Language
• Yahoo group about Wolof (in English and German)
• Wolof Online
• Wolof 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 Wolof
• OSAD spécialisée dans l’éducation non formelle et l’édition des ouvrages en langues nationales
• JangaWolof.wordpress.com (A blog about the Wolof language and culture)
• xLingua – Online-Dictionary German-Wolof/Wolof-German, 2009