Wolof is a Niger–Congo language spoken by the Wolof people in much of West African subregion of Senegambia that is split between the countries of Senegal, Mauritania, and the Gambia. Like the neighbouring languages Serer and Fula, it belongs to the Senegambian branch of the Niger–Congo language family. Unlike most other languages of its family, Wolof is not a tonal language.
States of the Wolof Empire
The Lord's Prayer in Latin-script Wolof, Church of the Pater Noster, Jerusalem. The letters ë, é, à and ñ are visible, as are geminate consonants and long double vowels.
Niger–Congo is a hypothetical language family spoken over the majority of sub-Saharan Africa. It unites the Mande languages, the Atlantic–Congo languages, and possibly several smaller groups of languages that are difficult to classify. If valid, Niger–Congo would be the world's largest in terms of member languages, the third-largest in terms of speakers, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area. It is generally considered to be the world's largest language family in terms of the number of distinct languages, just ahead of Austronesian, although this is complicated by the ambiguity about what constitutes a distinct language; the number of named Niger–Congo languages listed by Ethnologue is 1,540.
Westermann's 1911 Die Sudansprachen: Eine sprachvergleichende Studie laid much of the basis for the understanding of Niger–Congo.
