| Wolof | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in | ||
| Region | West Africa | |
| Total speakers | 3.2 million (mother tongue) 3.5 million (second language) [1] |
|
| Language family | Niger-Congo
|
|
| Official status | ||
| Official language in | None | |
| Regulated by | CLAD (Centre de linguistique appliquée de Dakar) | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1 | wo | |
| ISO 639-2 | wol | |
| ISO 639-3 | either: wol – Wolof wof – Gambian Wolof |
|
| Linguasphere | ||
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Wolof is a language spoken in Senegal, The Gambia, and Mauritania, and 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.
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]
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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 mother tongue. 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 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.
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; rather, Wolof marks aspect and focus of an action. The literal translation given in the table below is an exact word-by-word translation in the original word order, where the meanings of the individual words are separated by dashes.
To listen to the pronunciation of some Wolof words, click here
| Wolof | English | Literal translation into English |
|---|---|---|
| (As)salaamaalekum ! Response: Maalekum salaam ! This greeting is not Wolof—it is Arabic (used by Arabic speakers), but is commonly used. |
Hello! Response: Hello! |
(Arabic) peace be with you Response: and with you be peace |
| Na nga def ? / Naka nga def ? / Noo def? Response: Maa ngi fi rekk |
How do you do? / How are you doing? Response: I am fine |
How - you (already) - do Response: I here - be - here - only |
| Naka mu ? Response: Maa ngi fi |
What's up? Response: I'm fine |
How is it? Response: I'm here |
| Numu demee? / Naka mu demee?/ Response: Nice / Mu ngi dox |
How's it going? Response: Fine / Nice / It's going |
How is it going? Response: Nice (from English) / It's walking (going) |
| Lu bees ? Response: Dara (beesul) |
What's new? Response: Nothing (is new) |
What is it that is new? Response: Nothing/something (is not new) |
| Ba beneen (yoon). | See you soon (next time) | Until - other - (time) |
| Jërëjëf | Thanks / Thank you | It was worth it |
| Waaw | Yes | Yes |
| Déedéet | No | No |
| Fan la ... am ? | Where is a ...? | Where - that which is - ... - existing/having |
| Fan la fajkat am ? | Where is a physician/doctor? | Where - the one who is - heal-maker - existing/having |
| Fan la ... nekk ? | Where is the ...? | Where - it which is - ... - found? |
| Ana ...? | Where is ...? | Where is ...? |
| Ana loppitaan bi? | Where is the hospital? | Where is - hospital - the? |
| Noo tudd(a)* ? / Naka nga tudd(a) ? Response: ... laa tudd(a) / Maa ngi tudd(a) ... (* Gambian Wolof spells an <a> after word-ending doubled consonants ) |
What is your name? Response: My name is .... |
What you (already) - being called? Response: ... I (objective) - called / I am called ... |
Note: Phonetic transcriptions are printed between brackets [] following the rules of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
The Latin-based 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.
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-colonial period and is still used by many people.)
The first syllable of words is stressed; long vowels are pronounced with more time, but are not automatically stressed, as they are in English.
Wolof adds diacritic marks 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 the u-sound at the end). Similarly, "e" [ɛ] is open like English "get", while "é" [e] is closed similar to the sound of "a" in English "gate" (but without the i-sound at the end).
Single vowels are short, geminated vowels are long, so Wolof "o" [ɔ] is short and pronounced like "ou" in English "sought", but Wolof "oo" [ɔ:] is long and pronounced like the "aw" in English "sawed". If a closed vowel is long, the diacritic symbol is usually written 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], like "a" in English "sofa".
The characters (U+014B) Latin small letter eng "ŋ" and (U+014A) Latin capital letter eng "Ŋ" are used in the Wolof alphabet. They are pronounced like "ng" in English "hang".
The characters (U+00F1) Latin small letter n with tilde "ñ" and (U+00D1) Latin capital letter n with tilde "Ñ" are also used. They are pronounced like the same letter in Spanish "señor".
"c" is between "t" in English "fortune" and "ch" in English "choose", while "j" is between "d" in English "Indian" and "j" in "June". "x" is like "ch" in German "Bach", while "q" is like "c" in English "cool". "g" is always like "g" in English "garden", and "s" is always like "s" in English "stop". "w" is as in "wind" and "y" as in "yellow".
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)."
In Wolof, tenses like present tense, past tense, and future tense are just of secondary importance, they even play almost no role. Of crucial importance is the aspect of an action from the speaker's point of view. The most important distinction 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 indicate 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 conjugated pronouns, although aspect pronoun might be a 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 still used in a conjugated form along with the past marker.)
Example: Demoon naa Ndakaaru. "I already went to Dakar."
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, others a plural noun. In "City Wolof" (the type of Wolof spoken in big 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'
Nouns referring to persons typically use -ki -- nit-ki, nit-ñi, 'the person, the people'
Miscellaneous articles: si, gi, wi, mi, li, yi.
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"), ñett-fukk "thirty" (literally, "three-ten"). Alternately, "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 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)
| 1st | bu njëk |
| 2nd | ñaaréélu |
| 3rd | ñettéélu |
| 4th | ñeentéélu |
| 5th | juróoméélu |
| 6th | juróom-bennéélu |
| 7th | juróom-ñaaréélu |
| 8th | juróom-ñettéélu |
| 9th | juróom-ñeentéélu |
| 10th | fukkéélu |
| Situative (Presentative)
(Present Continuous) |
Terminative
(Past tense for action verbs or present tense for static verbs) |
Objective
(Emphasis on Object) |
Processive (Explicative and/or Descriptive)
(Emphasis on Verb) |
Subjective
(Emphasis on Subject) |
Neutral | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perfect | Imperfect | Perfect | Future | Perfect | Imperfect | Perfect | Imperfect | Perfect | Imperfect | Perfect | Imperfect | |
| 1st Person singular "I/me" | maa ngi
(I am+ Verb+ -ing) |
maa ngiy | naa
(I + past tense action verbs or present tense static verbs) |
dinaa
(I will ... / future) |
laa
(Puts the emphasis on the Object of the sentence) |
laay
(Indicates a habitual or future action) |
dama
(Puts the emphasis on the Verb or the state 'condition' of the sentence) |
damay
(Indicates a habitual or future action) |
maa
(Puts the emphasis on the Subject of the sentence) |
maay
(Indicates a habitual or future action) |
ma | may |
| 2nd Person singular "you" | yaa ngi | yaa ngiy | nga | dinga | nga | ngay | danga | dangay | yaa | yaay | nga | ngay |
| 3rd Person singular "he/she/it" | mu ngi | mu ngiy | na | dina | la | lay | dafa | dafay | moo | mooy | mu | muy |
| 1st Person plural "we" | nu ngi | nu ngiy | nanu | dinanu | lanu | lanuy | danu | danuy | noo | nooy | nu | nuy |
| 2nd Person plural "you" | yéena ngi | yéena ngiy | ngeen | dingeen | ngeen | ngeen di | dangeen | dangeen di | yéena | yéenay | ngeen | ngeen di |
| 3rd Person plural "they" | ñu ngi | ñu ngiy | nañu | dinañu | lañu | lañuy | dañu | dañuy | ñoo | ñooy | ñu | 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 certain temporal pronouns and precedes others.
The New Testament was translated into Wolof and published in 1987, second edition 2004, and in 2008 with some minor typographical corrections. [1]
The 1994 song '7 seconds' by Youssou N'Dour and Neneh Cherry is partially sung in Wolof.
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