Studying Wolof

Postcard from Myrna Najera Perez, during the Linfield College Semester Abroad Program at the ACI Baobab Center in Dakar, Senega

Ajami scripts in the Senegalese speech community

Wolofal (from Wolof: Wolof language or ethnic group and ‘-al’: causative morpheme) is an Ajami writing (a generic term commonly used to refer to non-Arabic languages written with Arabic scripts) used to transliterate Wolof in Senegal.It results from the early Islamization of the major Muslim ethnic groups in the country, especially the Pulaar, the Wolof and the Mandinka. Although Senegal is considered to be a French-speaking country, ironically over 50% of the Senegalese people are thought to be illiterate in French. French literacy is restricted to the minority educated group mostly found in urban areas. Because the literacy rate in French is very small in the country, especially among older people, Wolofal remains a major means of written communication among people who are illiterate in French and who have attended Qurʾānic schools. It is used by these people to write letters, run their informal businesses and read religious poems and writings. This paper is based upon fieldwork conducted in Senegal in the summer of 2004. It discusses the orthographic system of Wolofal (com-pared to Arabic) and provides a sociolinguistic profile of communities in which it serves as major means of written communication.Published versio

Machine Assisted Analysis of Vowel Length Contrasts in Wolof

Growing digital archives and improving algorithms for automatic analysis of text and speech create new research opportunities for fundamental research in phonetics. Such empirical approaches allow statistical evaluation of a much larger set of hypothesis about phonetic variation and its conditioning factors (among them geographical / dialectal variants). This paper illustrates this vision and proposes to challenge automatic methods for the analysis of a not easily observable phenomenon: vowel length contrast. We focus on Wolof, an under-resourced language from Sub-Saharan Africa. In particular, we propose multiple features to make a fine evaluation of the degree of length contrast under different factors such as: read vs semi spontaneous speech ; standard vs dialectal Wolof. Our measures made fully automatically on more than 20k vowel tokens show that our proposed features can highlight different degrees of contrast for each vowel considered. We notably show that contrast is weaker in semi-spontaneous speech and in a non standard semi-spontaneous dialect.Comment: Accepted to Interspeech 201

Esquisse d’une morphologie du wolof

La tradition descriptive du wolof admet généralement que les constructions telles que l’inversif, l’inchoatif, le causatif, la nominalisation, etc. sont obtenues en adjoignant un suffixe à un radical. Or, un tel modèle morphologique basée sur le mot, implique le recours à un catalogue de règles phonologiques qui ne sont pas évidentes dans la grammaire du wolof. Notre propos consiste à démontrer que le système morphologique du wolof accorde plus d’importance au squelette-CV qu’à une trame phonétique. L’analyse proposée permet donc d’éliminer un certain nombre de paradoxes découlant de la conception habituelle de la morphologie du wolof, et d’en proposer une image moins complexe, mais plus cohérente.The descriptive tradition of Wolof generally assumes that constructions such as the reversive, the inchoative, the causative, the nominalization, etc., are obtained by attaching a suffix to a stem. However, such a morphological model based on the word implies a set of phonological rules which are not self-evident in the grammar of Wolof. My purpose is to show that the CV-skeleton level is more important than the segmental level in the morphological system of Wolof. The proposed analysis thus allows us to eliminate a certain number of paradoxes resulting from the habitual conception of the morphology of Wolof, and to propose a less complex and more coherent system

Le wolof

Présentation synthétique du wolof. Le wolof est parlé par huit à dix millions de locuteurs, principalement au Sénégal. Comme la plupart des langues du groupe atlantique, le wolof est une langue à classes nominales et à alternances consonantiques du radical. L'incidence morphosyntaxique des classes y est cependant moindre. De manière caractéristique, cette langue exprime la focalisation à l'aide de conjugaisons et possède un riche système de dérivation verbale. Enfin, le wolof fait un usage remarquable d'un triplet de suffixes spatiaux dans différentes fonctions grammaticales

Ajami in West Africa

West Africans throughout the region have creatively adapted the Arabic script to write non-Arabic languages, a form of literacy known as Ajami which remains widespread today despite little or no government support. The variety of methods used to extend the Arabic script to fit other phonological systems are of particular interest: methods that appear unmotivated from a purely linguistic perspective can readily be explained as rational adaptations to the parallel educational system in which Ajami is typically learned, an issue often not taken into account in orthography planning

Traduire pour l’Afrique. Une approche géo-traducto-logique

Ce texte entend s’engager en faveur d’un traduire africain. Pour ce faire, il part du projet de traduction, initié par Daouda Ndiaye, de textes de la diaspora afro-américaine/européenne en langue wolof pour en interroger le geste même : que signifie le fait de restituer à l’Afrique l’héritage de ses fils perdus, ce que le traducteur compte accomplir à travers ses traductions? Est-il possible, par ces traductions en une langue africaine, ici le wolof, de rendre compte de ce qui a été perdu ou retenu durant le terrible voyage, mais aussi de ce qui a été (re)créé sur les nouveaux territoires (la nouveauté des créolisations)?Mots-clés : Afrique, wolof, Middle Passage, traversée, traduire.Translating for Africa: a Geo-translato-logical Perspective - This article actively supports the idea of an African translation. Taking as its point of departure the project of translation of Afro-American/European texts back into wolof initiated by Daouda Ndiaye, this article questions the meaning of such a journey: what does bringing back the legacy of Africa’s abducted sons, one of the translator’s aims, really mean? Is it possible, through these translations into an African language, in the case at hand wolof, to express what was lost or retained during the terrible journey, but also what was (re)created in the new territories (the novelty of creolisations)?Keywords: Africa, Wolof, Middle Passage, crossing, translation

Gendering translation: the 'female voice' in postcolonial Senegal

Using observations from translation theorists such as George Steiner, this article questions whether women's education in Senegal and separate male/female pools of communication have resulted in the development of distinct forms of writing. It examines extracts from texts by female Senegalese writers such as Mariama Bâ, Awa Ndiaye, and Ndeye Coumba Mbengue Diakhate in light of cultural and linguistic research, exploring the ways in which we can apply knowledge of Senegalese societies to our understanding of a text in pre-translation analysis. Along with extracts from both published and unpublished, new translations, the article also explores the way in which a translator may use research such as this to inform the translation process

The Trans-Saharan Book Trade: Manuscript Culture, Arabic Literacy and Intellectual History in Muslim Africa, edited by Graziano Krätli and Ghislaine Lydon

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