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.[3] Wolof dialects vary geographically and between rural and urban areas. The principal dialect of Dakar, for instance, is an urban mixture of Wolof, French, and Arabic.
Wolof is the standard spelling and may also refer to the Wolof ethnicity or culture. Variants include the older French Ouolof, Jollof, or Jolof, 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.
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 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 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.[6] 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 incomprehensible to standard Wolof speakers, a distinction that has been obscured because all Lebu speakers are bilingual in standard Wolof.[7]
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. The letters H, V, and Z are only used in foreign words.[8][9][10]
Wolof is most often written in this orthography, in which phonemes have a clear one-to-one correspondence to graphemes. Table below is the Wolof Latin alphabet and the corresponding phoneme. Highlighted letters are only used for loanwords and are not included in native Wolof words.
The Arabic-based script of Wolof, referred to as Wolofal, was set by the government as well, between 1985 and 1990, although never adopted by a decree, as the effort by the Senegalese ministry of education was to be part of a multi-national standardization effort.[11] This alphabet has been used since pre-colonial times, as the first writing system to be adopted for Wolof, and is still used by many people, mainly Imams and their students in Quranic and Islamic schools.
Additionally, another script exists: Garay, an alphabetic script invented by Assane Faye 1961, which has been adopted by a small number of Wolof speakers.[13][14]
The first syllable of words is stressed; long vowels are pronounced with more time but are not automatically stressed, as they are in English.
There may be an additional low vowel, or this may be confused with orthographic à.[citation needed]
All vowels may be long (written double) or short.[16]/aː/ is written ⟨à⟩ 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,[17]
Lekk-oon-ngeen
/lɛkːɔːnŋɡɛːn/
eat-PAST-FIN.2PL
Lekk-oon-ngeen
/lɛkːɔːnŋɡɛːn/
eat-PAST-FIN.2PL
'You (plural) ate.'
Dóor-óon-ngéen
/doːroːnŋɡeːn/
hit-PAST-FIN.2PL
Dóor-óon-ngéen
/doːroːnŋɡeːn/
hit-PAST-FIN.2PL
'You (plural) hit.'
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,
Door-u-ma-leen-fa
/dɔːrumalɛːnfa/
begin-NEG-1SG-3PL-LOC
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 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:[18]
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.[20][21] (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 ([ɴq]), are restricted to word-medial and -final position. In the final place, geminate consonants may be followed by a faint epentheticschwa 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.
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 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.[24]
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.[clarification needed] 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. Verbs are not inflected; instead pronouns are used to mark person, aspect, tense, and focus.[25]: 779
Consonant harmony
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Gender
Wolof does not mark natural gender as 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 (quinary) and 10 (decimal). 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
Personal pronouns
subject
object
singular
plural
singular
plural
1st person
man
nun
ma
nu
2nd person
yow
yeen
la
leen
3rd person
moom
ñoom
ko
leen
Temporal pronouns
Conjugation of the temporal pronouns
1st person
2nd person
3rd person
singular
plural
singular
plural
singular
plural
"I"
"we"
"you"
"you all"
"he/she/it"
"they"
Situative (Presentative)
Perfect
maa ngi
nu ngi
yaa ngi
yéena ngi
mu ngi
ñu ngi
Imperfect
maa ngiy
nu ngiy
yaa ngiy
yéena ngiy
mu ngiy
ñu ngiy
Terminative
Perfect
naa
nanu
nga
ngeen
na
nañu
Future
dinaa
dinanu
dinga
dingeen
dina
dinañu
Objective
Perfect
laa
lanu
nga
ngeen
la
lañu
Imperfect
laay
lanuy
ngay
ngeen di
lay
lañuy
Processive (Explicative and/or Descriptive)
Perfect
dama
danu
danga
dangeen
dafa
dañu
Imperfect
damay
danuy
dangay
dangeen di
dafay
dañuy
Subjective
Perfect
maa
noo
yaa
yéena
moo
ñoo
Imperfect
maay
nooy
yaay
yéenay
mooy
ñooy
Neutral
Perfect
ma
nu
nga
ngeen
mu
ñu
Imperfect
may
nuy
ngay
ngeen di
muy
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 specific temporal pronouns and precedes others.
"Jalele sainou ane na ainou guissetil dara, tey mague dieki thy soufe guissa yope." "The child looks everywhere and often sees nought, but the old man, sitting on the ground, sees everything." (#2)
"Poudhie ou naigue de na jaija ah taw, tey sailo yagoul." "The roof fights with the rain, but he who is sheltered ignores it." (#8)
"Sopa bour ayoul, wandy bour bou la sopa a ko guenne." "To love the king is not bad, but a king who loves you is better." (#16)
"Lou mpithie nana, nanetil nane ou gneye." "The bird can drink much, but the elephant drinks more." (#68)
In the appendix to his Folktales from the Gambia, Emil Magel, a professor of African literature and of Swahili,[32] included the Wolof text of the story of "The Donkeys of Jolof," "Fari Mbam Ci Rew i Jolof"[33] accompanied by an English translation.[34]
In his Grammaire de la Langue Woloffe published in 1858, David Boilat, a Senegalese writer and missionary,[35] included a selection of Wolof proverbs, riddles and folktales accompanied by French translations.[36]
Du Tieddo au Talibé by Lilyan Kesteloot and Bassirou Dieng, published in 1989,[37] is a collection of traditional tales in Wolof with French translations. The stories come from the Wolof monarchies that ruled Senegal from the 13th to the beginning of the 20th century.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Doomi aadama yépp danuy juddu, yam ci tawfeex ci sag ak sañ-sañ. Nekk na it ku xam dëgg te ànd na ak xelam, te war naa jëflante ak nawleen, te teg ko ci wàllu mbokk.
^"Wolof Brochure"(PDF). Indiana.edu. Archived(PDF) from the original on 2013-09-04. Retrieved 10 June 2018.
^Harper, Douglas. "banana". Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved 6 March 2016.
^Danielle D'Offay & Guy Lionet, Diksyonner Kreol-Franse / Dictionnaire Créole Seychellois – Français, Helmut Buske Verlag, Hamburg, 1982. In all fairness, the word might as easily be from Fulanyaamde, "to eat".
^Torrence, Harold The Clause Structure of Wolof: Insights Into the Left Periphery, John Benjamins Publishing, 2013, p. 20, ISBN9789027255815[1]
^Hammarström (2015) Ethnologue 16/17/18th editions: a comprehensive review: online appendices
^Pape Amadou Gaye, Practical Cours in / Cours Practique en Wolof: An Audio–Aural Approach.
^Some are restricted or rare, and sources disagree about this. Torrence (2013) claims that all consonants but prenasalized stops may be geminate, while Diouf (2009) does not list the fricatives, q, or r y w, and does not recognize glottal stop in the inventor. The differences may be dialectical or because some sounds are rare.
Bichler, Gabriele Aïscha (2003). "Bejo, Curay und Bin-bim? Die Sprache und Kultur der Wolof im Senegal (mit angeschlossenem Lehrbuch Wolof)". Europäische Hochschulschriften. Vol. 90. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Verlagsgruppe. ISBN3-631-39815-8.
Ka, Omar (1994). Wolof Phonology and Morphology. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. ISBN0-8191-9288-0.
McLaughlin, Fiona (2001). "Dakar Wolof and the configuration of an urban identity". Journal of African Cultural Studies. 14 (2): 153–172. doi:10.1080/13696810120107104.
McLaughlin, Fiona (2022). "Senegal: urban Wolof then and now". Urban Contact Dialects and Language Change. Routledge. pp. 47–65.
Swigart, Leigh (1992). "Two codes or one? The insiders' view and the description of codeswitching in Dakar". In Eastman, Carol M. (ed.). Codeswitching. Multilingual Matters. ISBN1-85359-167-X.
Torrence, Harold (2013). The Clause Structure of Wolof: Insights into the Left Periphery. Benjamins.
Unseth, Carla (2009). "Vowel Harmony in Wolof"(PDF). Occasional Papers in Applied Linguistics. 7. Dallas International University.
Franke, Michael (2002). Kauderwelsch, Wolof für den Senegal – Wort für Wort. Bielefeld: Reise Know-How Verlag. ISBN3-89416-280-5.
Franke, Michael; Diouf, Jean Léopold; Pozdniakov, Konstantin (2004). Le wolof de poche – Kit de conversation. Chennevières-sur-Marne, France: Assimil. ISBN978-2-7005-4020-8. — (Phrasebook/grammar with 1 CD).
Gaye, Pape Amadou (1980). Wolof: An Audio-Aural Approach. United States Peace Corps.
Malherbe, Michel; Sall, Cheikh (1989). Parlons Wolof – Langue et culture. Paris: L'Harmattan. ISBN2-7384-0383-2. — this book uses a simplified orthography which is not compliant with the CLAD standards; a CD is available.
Arame Fal, Rosine Santos, Jean Léonce Doneux: Dictionnaire wolof-français (suivi d'un index français-wolof). Karthala, Paris, France 1990, ISBN2-86537-233-2.
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; 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, ISBN0-7818-1086-8 (this book refers predominantly to the dialect spoken in the Gambia and does not use the standard orthography of CLAD).
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.
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