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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. 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".[2]. 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.[3]
[edit] Geographical distributionAbout 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. [edit] Example phrasesThis 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.
[edit] Orthography and pronunciationNote: 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.) [edit] VowelsWolof adds some diacritic symbols to the vowel letters to distinguish between open and closed vowels. Example: "o" [ɔ] 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" [ɔ] is short and pronounced like "o" in English "soft", but Wolof "oo" [ɔ:] 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 [ə], if not stressed. [edit] ConsonantsThe character (U+014B) Latin small letter eng "ŋ" and (U+014A) Latin capital letter eng "Ŋ" 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. [edit] Grammar[edit] Notable characteristics[edit] Pronoun conjugation instead of verbal conjugationIn 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)." [edit] Conjugation with respect to aspect instead of tenseIn 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." [edit] Action verbs versus static verbs and adjectives[edit] Consonant harmony[edit] GenderWolof 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. [edit] Numerals[edit] Cardinal numbersThe 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".
[edit] Ordinal numbersOrdinal 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)
[edit] Personal pronouns[edit] Temporal pronouns[edit] 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. [edit] LiteratureThe New Testament was translated into Wolof and published in 1987, second edition 2004, with some minor typograhpical corrections in 2008. [1] [edit] References
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] External links Wolof language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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