Resources for Learning Wolof

Resources for learning Wolof available for downloading

A Windows 1,139 word Wolof to French / 1,254 word French to Wolof dictionary is available for downloading at Dictionnaire Wolof FranÁais - FranÁais Wolof

The Peace Corps dictionary of Gambian Wolof (620kB) and a grammar primer of Gambian Wolof (250kB) were both produced by Sierra Dem, (1995) of the U.S. Peace Corps in the Gambia in .pdf format and are available from a number of places on the internet including this website. Other Gambian Wolof resources including the Living Lexicon, a database of Wolof vocabulary for reference and vocabulary testing which is available for various versions of Microsoft Access.

Senegalaisement.com offer a downloadable course in Wolof. The course is in French.

The American Overseas Digital Library includes a number of electronic books in Wolof.

Progiciels Bourbeau Pinard Inc. have developed a collection of free downloadable programs for working with bodies of text in a variety of languages including Wolof. These programs enable the analysis of texts to produce statistics, concordances, vocab lists, recoding of text files (character substitution), and automatic alignment of the same text in different languages.

Ordering books and other resources on the Wolof language via the Internet

CD ROMs

Transparent language have produced a CD ROM that teaches 101 languages of the World including Wolof. It claims to include a vocabulary of 5,000 words and hundreds of basic phrases, native speaker sound and speech analysis for each language. It includes word games, dictations and interactive dialogues. Worth checking out.

Dictionaries

Ay Baati Wolof-A Wolof Dictionary by MUNRO, Pamela; GAYE, Dieynaba (Revised Edition 1997) is the only Wolof-English-Wolof dictionary available and quite comprehensive. It is produced by UCLA (Occasional Papers in Linguistics, Number 19).

Dictionnaire Wolof-FranÁais, suivi díun index FranÁais-Wolof by A. Fall, R. Santos et J. Doneux (1990) is the best of the Wolof-French dictionaries and quite comprehensive.

Dictionnaire FranÁais-Wolof by Mamadou Cisse (1998) is the best French-Wolof dictionary.

Le Wolof du Poche by Michael FRANKE (2001) is just out.

Other Wolof dictionaries and glossaries, all of which are in French include:

Wolof Courses

The UCLA language materials project database lists four books for Wolof language studies including:

Other materials available from ERIC include Wolof Teachers Manual. Draft Chapters I-VI (ED294420), and Dakar Wolof: A Basic Course (ED051686) by Loren NUSSBAUM a course which is based on Stewart's Introductory course in Dakar Wolof as well as a few technical linguistic papers on the Wolof language.

J'apprends le Wolof by Marina YAGUELLO, Jean-LÈopold DIOUF; This is probably the best course in Wolof available in French. Audio tapes of the dialogues and exercises to accompany the book are also available.

Parlons Wolof Langue et Culture by SALL MALHERBE is another Wolof language course in French.

Other courses and grammar manuals which are all written in French include:

Wolof Texts

Le Bossu Et Le Ninki-Nanka : Ma-Xuuge Ak Ninki-Nanka Ba by Sophie MONTDESIR, Mamadou CISSE is a children's story in Wolof and French.

LÈÈbu, proverbes wolof by Jacqueline CRIBIER, Martine DREYFUS, Mamadou GUEYE is a collection of Wolof proverbs

There are three good books of Wolof stories each with an adjacent French translation.

Numerous short books in Wolof of varying difficulty on many subject have been published in the past 10 years as part of literacy programs by organisations such as:

ENDA have an incomplete publications page. Look for "TÈereb nataali juddu bu ýddina si sÈpp" (a manual in Wolof for teachers of sex education) by Fran P. HOSKEN & Marcia L. WILLIAMS.

Other Books

Wolof Phonology and Morphology by Omar KA

The University of Illinois published a Wolof course book called Ayca ci Wolof ("Let's Go in Wolof") with tapes. I do not whether this course and the tapes are still available. Contact either UI African Studies or UI Linguistics for information.

SYLLA, Assane 1994 La Philosophie Morale des Wolof (Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire [IFAN], Dakar) is an excellent treatise in French on the world view of the Wolof. Also an excellent source of Wolof proverbs, which the author uses to analyse Wolof thinking. It can be ordered from African Imprint Library Services.

An excellent tool for learning any language is Lexicarry: An Illustrated Vocabulary Builder for Second Languages by Patrick R. MORAN 1990 (Pro Lingua Associates, Brattleboro) It contains line drawing illustrations to convey the meanings of over 3,500 words of everyday vocabulary. A Wolof word list (.pdf format 171kB) to accompany this is available on this site.

Other resources on the Wolof language

UCLA have other resources for learning Wolof including computerized Wolof exercises (Apple-Mac only).

Verbix have an online Wolof verb conjugator.

Fishbase provides a online searchable database of information on species of fish including Wolof common names. The information provided by this database as of February 2001 with corrections of spelling is contained in Marine Fish of Senegal and Freshwater Fish of Senegal. IRD in association with LINUS in Senegal have also produced a database of fish species known to exist in Senegal based on the information contained in Fishbase. An index based on name (scientific, common french name or local language name) allows the user to find the Wolof name for a particular species or the scientific name for a given Wolof name.

Africast.com have produced an internet email site permitting users to email in a variety of African languages including Wolof.

The Senegalese have produced many films. A list of 46 titles with Wolof soundtracks is found at the US Internet Movie Database or the UK Internet Movie Database. The National Library of Australia video search page also lists a number of Wolof titles. The collection is housed at Cinemedia in Melbourne. Cinemedia Aus Video database search includes their own Wolof films.

Create International have produced a Wolof drama which seeks to encourage people to consider that one day we must all give an account of our lives to God. The title translated means "The Scales of God".

Are you interested in borrowing a book on the Wolof? The U.S.A. Library of Congress database lists 152 books under a search on Wolof.

Michael Canov has produced a periodic table in Wolof as part of a site listing the names of the elements in many languages. You can also find the table at his periodic table mirror site.

Font sets with all Wolof characters for typing in Wolof

Free

Commercial

Note also that all the Wolof characters not found in English are contained in the Unicode Latin supplement 1 and Latin Extended A character sets. Refer to the Chart of special Wolof character Unicode codes for more information.

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