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Wolof language
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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. Like the neighboring language Fula, it belongs to the Atlantic branch of the Niger-Congo language family. Unlike most other languages of Sub-Saharan Africa, Wolof is not a tonal language.
Wolof is the most widely spoken language in Senegal, spoken not only by members of the Wolof ethnic group (approximately 40 percent of the population) but also by most other Senegalese.
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Encyclopedia
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. Like the neighboring language Fula, it belongs to the Atlantic branch of the Niger-Congo language family. Unlike most other languages of Sub-Saharan Africa, Wolof is not a tonal language.
Wolof is the most widely spoken language in Senegal, spoken not only by members of the Wolof ethnic group (approximately 40 percent 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 Wolof ethnic group 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", and "Olof" were used.
Unlike most African languages, Wolof has had some influence on Western European languages. Banana is a Wolof word in English, and the English word yam is believed to be derived from Wolof/Fula nyami, "to eat food." Hip or hep (e.g., jazz musicians' now cliched "hip cat") is believed by many etymologists to derive from the Wolof hepicat, "one who has his eyes open". Some etymologists reject this, however, and in late 2007 adopted the pun "to cry Wolof" as a general dismissal or belittlement of etymologies they believe to be based on "superficial similarities" rather than documented attribution.
Geographical distribution
About 40 percent (approximately 3.2 million people) of Senegal's population speak Wolof as their mother tongue. 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. The official language of Senegal is French.
In The Gambia, about 15 percent (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 percent of the population use it as a first language. In Serrekunda, The Gambia's largest town, although only a tiny minority are ethnic Wolofs, approximately 90 percent of the population speaks and/or understands Wolof. Wolof is increasingly the mother tongue of young people of mixed ethnicity. 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 percent), Wolof (15 percent) and Fula (15 percent) are as yet not used in formal education.
In Mauritania, about 7 percent (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; rather, Wolof marks 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).
The Latin-based orthograhy 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.
Wolof is most often written in this orthography, in which phonemes have a clear, one-to-one correspondence to graphemes.
(A traditional Arabic-based transcription of Wolof called Wolofal dates back to the pre-colonal period and is still used by many people.)
Vowels
Wolof adds some diacritic symbols to the vowel letters to distinguish between open and closed vowels. Example: "o" [?] is open like English "often", "ó" [o] 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 diacritic 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 [?], if not stressed.
Consonants
The character (U+014B) Latin small letter eng "?" and (U+014A) Latin capital letter eng "?" is used in the Wolof alphabet.
The character (U+00F1) Latin small letter n with tilde "ñ" and (U+00D1) Latin capital letter n with tilde "Ñ" is also used.
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
Gender
Wolof lacks gender-specific pronouns: there is one word 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' in order to indicate the person's gender.
For the most part, Wolof does not have noun concord ("agreement") classes as in Bantu or Romance languages. But the markers of noun definiteness (usually called "definite articles" in grammatical terminology) do agree with the noun they modify. There are at least ten articles in Wolof, some of them indicating a singular noun, other a plural noun. In "City Wolof" (the type of Wolof spoken in big cities like Dakar), the article -bi is often used as a pro-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, jigeen-ji, 'the mosque, the girl'
Nouns referring to person typically use -ki -- nit-ki, nit-ñi, 'the person, the people'
Miscellaneous articles: si, gi, wi, mi, li, yi.
Numerals
Cardinal numbers
The Wolof numeral system is based on the numbers "5" and "10". It is extremely regular in formation, comparable only 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"), ñett-fukk "thirty" (literally, "three-ten"). Alternately, "thirty" is fanweer, which also means "month".
Ordinal numbers
Ordinal numbers are formed by adding the ending –éélu (pronounced ay-lu) to the cardinal number.
For example two is ñaar and second is ñaaréélu
The one exception to this system is “first”, which is bu njëk (or the adapted French word premier: përëmye)
Personal pronouns
Temporal pronouns
Conjugation of the temporal pronouns
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.
Bibliography
- 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 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 The 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).
- [Senegal, Government of], 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.
- [Senegal, Government of], 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.
- [Senegal, Government of], Décret n° 2005-992 du 21 octobre 2005 relatif à l'orthographe et à la séparation des mots en wolof.
External links
- (this dictionary mixes Senagalese and Gambian variants without notice, and does not use a standard orthography)
- partially available at Google Books.
- (an online Wolof to English translator; you can add your own words to this dictionary; refers almost exclusively to the Gambian variants and does not use a standard orthography)
- (A blog about the Wolof language and culture)
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