| Wolof | |
| Nativename: | Wolof làkk Wolof: وࣷلࣷفْ لࣵکّ |
| Region: | Senegambia |
| States: | Senegal, Gambia, Mauritania |
| Ethnicity: | Wolof |
| Speakers: | L1 million |
| Date: | 2013–2021 |
| Ref: | e27 |
| Dia1: | Baol |
| Dia2: | Cayor |
| Dia3: | Jolof |
| Dia4: | Lebu |
| Dia5: | Jander |
| Dia6: | Dakar–Wolof |
| Speakers2: | L2 million (2021) |
| Familycolor: | Niger–Congo |
| Fam2: | Atlantic–Congo |
| Fam3: | West Atlantic |
| Fam4: | Senegambian |
| Fam5: | Fula–Wolof |
| Script: | Latin (Wolof alphabet) Arabic (Wolofal) Garay |
| Agency: | CLAD (Centre de linguistique appliquée de Dakar) |
| Iso1: | wo |
| Iso2: | wol |
| Lc1: | wol |
| Ld1: | Wolof |
| Lc2: | wof |
| Ld2: | Gambian Wolof |
| Lingua: | 90-AAA-aa |
| Map: | Wolof_language_map.svg |
| Mapcaption: | Areas where Wolof is spoken |
| Glotto: | wolo1247 |
| Glottorefname: | Wolofic |
| Lingua: | 90-AAA--> |
Wolof (; Wolof làkk, Wolof: وࣷلࣷفْ لࣵکّ) is a Niger–Congo language spoken by the Wolof people in much of the West African subregion of Senegambia that is split between the countries of Senegal, the Gambia and Mauritania. Like the neighbouring languages Serer and Fula, it belongs to the Senegambian branch of the Niger–Congo language family. Unlike most other languages of its family, Wolof is not a tonal language.
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.[1] 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 French: Ouolof, French: Jollof, or French: 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.
English is believed to have adopted some Wolof loanwords, such as banana, via Spanish or Portuguese,[2] and Creoles and pidgins, English based: nyam, used also in Spanish: 'ñam' as an onomatopoeia for eating or chewing, in several Caribbean English Creoles meaning "to eat" (compare Seychellois Creole nyanmnyanm, also meaning "to eat").[3]
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.
Wolof is one of the Senegambian languages, which are characterized by consonant mutation.[4] 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.
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.[5]
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, H, 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 not included in native Wolof words. They are only used in foreign words.[6] [7] [8]
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.
| À à | B b | C c | D d | E e | É é | Ë ë | F f | G g | H h | I i | J j | K k | L l | M m | ||
| pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | (pronounced as /link/) | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |
| N n | Ñ ñ | Ŋ ŋ | O o | Ó ó | P p | Q q | R r | S s | T t | U u | V v | W w | X x | Y y | Z z | |
| pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | (pronounced as /link/) | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | (pronounced as /link/) |
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.[9] 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.
pronounced as /link//pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/~pronounced as /link/ | |
pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/~pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/~pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/~pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |
pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ |
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Additionally, another script exists: Garay, an alphabetic script invented by Assane Faye 1961, which has been adopted by a small number of Wolof speakers.[12] [13]
The first syllable of words is stressed; long vowels are pronounced with more time but are not automatically stressed, as they are in English.
The vowels are as follows:[14]
| Front | Central | Back | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| short | long | short | long | short | long | ||
| Close | pronounced as /link/ (i) | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ (u) | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| Close-mid | pronounced as /link/ (é) | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ (ó) | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| mid | pronounced as /link/ (ë) | ||||||
| Open-mid | pronounced as /link/ (e) | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ (o) | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| Open | pronounced as /link/ (a) | pronounced as /link/ |
All vowels may be long (written double) or short.[15] pronounced as //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,[16]
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 in word-initial position are as follows:[17]
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | pronounced as /link/ (m) | pronounced as /link/ (n) | pronounced as /link/ (ñ) | pronounced as /link/ (ŋ)[18] | ||||
| Plosive | prenasalized | pronounced as /ᵐb/ (mb) | pronounced as /ⁿd/ (nd) | pronounced as /ᶮɟ/ (nj) | pronounced as /ᵑɡ/ (ng) | |||
| voiced | pronounced as /link/ (b) | pronounced as /link/ (d) | pronounced as /link/ (j) | pronounced as /link/ (g) | ||||
| voiceless | pronounced as /link/ (p) | pronounced as /link/ (t) | pronounced as /link/ (c) | pronounced as /link/ (k) | pronounced as /link/ (q) | pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Fricative | pronounced as /link/ (f) | pronounced as /link/ (s) | pronounced as /link/~pronounced as /link/ (x) | |||||
| Trill | pronounced as /link/ (r) | |||||||
| Approximant | pronounced as /link/ (w) | pronounced as /link/ (l) | pronounced as /link/ (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.[19] [20] (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 (pronounced as /[ɴq]/), are restricted to word-medial and -final position. In the final place, geminate consonants may be followed by a faint epenthetic 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.
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")
Unlike most sub-Saharan African languages, Wolof has no tones. Other non-tonal languages of sub-Saharan Africa include Amharic, Swahili and Fula.
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.[23]
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)."
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."
Wolof has two main verb classes: dynamic and stative. Verbs are not inflected; instead pronouns are used to mark person, aspect, tense, and focus.[24]
Wolof does not mark sexual 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."
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 (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 |
| subject | object | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| singular | plural | singular | plural | ||
| 1st person | man | nun | ma | nu | |
| 2nd person | yow | yeen | la | leen | |
| 3rd person | moom | ñoom | ko | leen | |
| 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.
| English | Wolof | |
|---|---|---|
| Hello. | Nuyu naala. | |
| Yes. | Waaw. | |
| Yes please. | Waaw jërëjëf. | |
| No. | Déet. | |
| No thanks. | Baax na, jërëjëf. | |
| Please. | Ma ngi lay ñaan. | |
| Thank you. | Jërëjëf. | |
| Thank you very much. | Maangilay sant bu baax. | |
| You're welcome. | Ñoo ko bokk. | |
| I'd like a coffee please. | Kafe laa bëgg, nga baalma. | |
| Excuse me. | Nga baalma. | |
| What time is it? | Ban waxtu moo jot? | |
| Can you repeat that please? | Baamtuwaat ko, nga baalma? | |
| Please speak more slowly. | Waxal ndank. | |
| I don't understand. | Xawma li nga bëgg wax. | |
| Sorry. | Baal ma. | |
| Where are the toilets? | Ani wanag yi? | |
| How much does this cost? | Bii ñaata lay jar? | |
| Welcome! | Dalal-jàmm! | |
| Good morning. | Suba ak jàmm. | |
| Good afternoon. | Ngoonu jàmm. | |
| Good evening. | Guddig jàmm. | |
| Good night. | Ñu fanaan ci jàmm. | |
| Goodbye. | Ba beneen yóon. |
The New Testament was translated into Wolof and published in 1987, second edition 2004, and in 2008 with some minor typographical corrections.[26]
Boubacar Boris Diop published his novel Doomi Golo in Wolof in 2002.[27]
The 1994 song "7 Seconds" by Youssou N'Dour and Neneh Cherry is partially sung in Wolof.
In his 1865 collection of West African proverbs, Wit and Wisdom from West Africa,[28] Richard Francis Burton included a selection of over 200 Wolof proverbs in both Wolof and English translation[29] drawn from Jean Dard's Grammaire Wolofe of 1826.[30] Here are some of those proverbs:
In the appendix to his Folktales from the Gambia, Emil Magel, a professor of African literature and of Swahili,[31] included the Wolof text of the story of "The Donkeys of Jolof," "Fari Mbam Ci Rew i Jolof"[32] accompanied by an English translation.[33]
In his Grammaire de la Langue Woloffe published in 1858, David Boilat, a Senegalese writer and missionary,[34] included a selection of Wolof proverbs, riddles and folktales accompanied by French translations.[35]
Du Tieddo au Talibé by Lilyan Kesteloot and Bassirou Dieng, published in 1989,[36] 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.
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
| Translation | Latin Script | Wolofal (Arabic) Script | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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. | Wolof: 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. |