Language/Wolof/Pronunciation/Alphabet-and-Pronunciation

Wolof is a language of Senegal, the Gambia and Mauritania, and the native language of the Wolof people.

Unlike most other languages of the Niger-Congo family, Wolof is not a tonal language.

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.

Vowels

Wolof adds diacritic marks to the vowel letters to distinguish between open and closed vowels. Example: "o" [ɔ] is open like (British) 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 (British) English "sought", but Wolof "oo" [ɔ:] is long and pronounced like the "aw" in (British) 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 [!], like "a" in English "sofa".

Consonants

The characters Latin small letter ng "ŋ" and Latin capital letter ng "Ŋ" are used in the Wolof alphabet. They are pronounced like "ng" in English "hang". The characters Latin small letter n with tilde "ñ" and Latin capital letter n with tilde "Ñ" are also used. They are pronounced like the same letter in Spanish "señor". "c" is pronounced like "ch" in English "choose", while "j" is pronounced like "j" in "June". "x" is like "h" in English "how", while "q" is is the equivalent of “xx” it is more gutural than the sound “h”., "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.

Here is how to write and pronounce the alphabet:

Letters

Letter	A a	B b	C c	D d	E e	Ë ë	F f	G g	I i	J j	K k	L l	M m	N n	Ñ ñ	Ŋ ŋ	O o	P p	Q q	R r	S s	T t	U u	W w	X x	Y y
IPA	ɐ	b	c	d	ɛ	ə	f	g	i	ɟ	k	i	m	n	ɲ	ŋ	ɔ	p	q	r	s	t	u	w	x~χ	j

Digraph

Digraph	aa	bb	cc	dd	ee	ée	ëe	gg	ii	jj	kk	ll	mb	mm	nc	nd	ng	nj	nk	nn	nq	nt	ññ	ŋŋ	oo	pp	rr	tt	uu	ww	yy
IPA	aː	bː	cːʰ	dː	ɛː	eː	əː	gː	iː	ɟːʰ	kː/kːʰ	lː/ɫː	m̩b	mː	ɲc	n̩d	ŋ̩g	ɲɟ	ŋ̩k	nː	ɴq	n̩t	ɲː	ŋː	oː	pː/pːʰ	rː	tː/tːʰ	uː	wː	jː

Sources

http://publish.illinois.edu/wolof201fall14/files/2014/08/NEW_WOLOF_BOOK.pdf