Wolof language

Encyclopedia : W : WO : WOL : Wolof language

Wolof is a language spoken in Senegal, the Gambia, and Mauritania, and it is the native language of the ethnic group of the Wolof people. It belongs to the Atlantic branch of the Niger-Congo language family.

Wolof is the most widely-spoken language in Senegal, spoken not only by members of the Wolof ethnic group (approximately 40% of the population) but also by most other Senegalese. Wolof dialects may vary between countries (Senegal and the Gambia) and the rural and urban areas. "Dakar-Wolof", for instance, is an urban mixture of Wolof, French, Arabic, and even a little English spoken in Dakar, the capital of Senegal.

"Wolof" is the standard spelling, and is a term that may also refer to the ethnic group of the Wolofs or to things originating from Wolof culture or tradition. As an aid to pronunciation, some older French publications use the spelling "Ouolof"; for the same reason, some English publications adopt the spelling "Wollof", predominantly referring to Gambian Wolof. Prior to the 20th Century, the forms "Volof", "Olof" and (rarely) "Jolof", "Jollof" and "Dyolof" can be found.

Geographical distribution

About 40% (approximataly 3.2 million people) of Senegal's population speak Wolof as its mother tongue. An additional 40% of the population speak Wolof as 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 despite its location and ethnic makeup. For example, even in the city of Fatick where a majority of the people are Serrer, or in the city of Tambacounda where a majority are Pulaar, or in the city of Ziguinchor where the majority are Diola, Wolof is spoken in most public settings. The official language of Senegal is French.

In The Gambia, about 15% (approximately 200,000 people) of the population speak Wolof as a first language, but Wolof has a disproportionate influence because of its prevalence in Banjul, The Gambia's capital, where 50% of the population use it as a first language. In Serrekunda, The Gambia's largest town, only few people have Wolof ethnicity, although approximately 90% of the population speaks and/or understands Wolof. Increasingly, young people from hetero-ethnic parents grow up using Wolof as a first language. Overall, Wolof is gaining influence in The Gambia, partly due to its association with the popular mbalax music and Senegalese popular culture. In Banjul and Serrekunda, Wolof has gained lingua franca status and is already more widely spoken than Mandinka. The official language of the Gambia is English; Mandinka (40%), Wolof (15%) and Fula (15%) are as yet not used in formal education.

In Mauritania, about 7% (approximately 185,000 people) of the population speak Wolof. There, the language is used only around the southern coastal regions. Mauritania's official language is Arabic; French is used as lingua franca.

Example phrases

This paragraph uses the exact orthography developed by the CLAD institute, which can be found in Arame Fal's dictionary (see bibliography below). For the literal translation please note that Wolof does not have tenses in the sense of the Indo-European languages, like for example the Present Progressive Tense in English: Expressions are rather made up by Aspect and Focus of an action (and every translation into an English tense is just an approximation of the original meaning). The literal translation given in the table below is an exact word-by-word translation in the original word order, where the meaning of the single words are separated by dashes.

Orthography and pronunciation

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

There is no officially standardized orthography for Wolof, but the language institute "Centre de linguistique appliquée de Dakar" (CLAD) is widely acknowledged as an authority when it comes to spelling rules for Wolof. Wolof is written with the letters of the Latin alphabet.

Wolof phonemes have a clear, one-to-one correspondence to the Roman alphabet. ^{([Disputed statementdisputed]—see [x" pronounced [x]. Furthermore, Wolof adds some diacritic symbols to the vowel letters to distinguish between open and closed vowels. Example: "o" is open like English "often", "ó" is closed similar to the o-sound in English "most" (but without that u-sound at the end).}

Single vowels are short, geminated vowels are long, so Wolof "o" is short and pronounced like "o" in English "soft", but Wolof "oo" is long and pronounced like the "a" in English "call". If a closed vowel is long, the diacretic symbol is usually set only above the first vowel, e.g. "óo", but some sources deviate from this CLAD standard and set it above both vowels, e.g. "óó".

The very common Wolof letter "ë" is pronounced [ə], if not stressed.

Grammar

Notable characteristics

Pronoun conjugation instead of verbal conjugation

In Wolof, verbs are unchangeable words which cannot be conjugated. To express different tenses or aspects of an action, the personal pronouns are conjugated - not the verbs! Therefore, the term Temporal Pronoun has become established for this part of speech.

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 even play almost no role. It is the aspect of an action from the speaker's point of view, which is of crucial importance. The most important aspect 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 are, 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 pronouns to be conjugated, although Aspect Pronoun might be the 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 go."

If the speaker absolutely wants to express that an action took place in the past, this is not done by conjugation, but by adding the suffix -(w)oon to the verb. (Please bear in mind, that in a sentence the Temporal Pronoun is already used in a conjugated form besides the past marker.)

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

Action verbs versus static verbs and adjectives

Consonant harmony

Missing gender

Grammatically, Wolof does not dinstinguish between male (masculine), female (feminine) and neuter; in other words, it does not use a grammatical gender. So, for example, mu ngi dem can be translated into "he goes", "she goes" or "it goes", depending on the actual context.

A lot of other languages reflect their grammatical gender best in their definite articles. The translation of the English article "the" may serve as an example: Depending on the gender, German uses the three articles "der", "die", "das" for "the", and French uses the two articles "le" and "la". - Wolof does not make such distinctions, so that its article bi can simply be translated as "the". However, the Wolof article has to follow the consonant harmony or noun classification mentioned in the chapter above.

Numerals

Cardinal numbers

The Wolof numeral system is based on the numbers "5" and "10". Example: benn "one", juróom "five", juróom-benn "six", fukk "ten", fukk ak juróom benn "sixteen".

Ordinal numbers