WOLOF LANGUAGE

an Atlantic language of the Niger-Congo language family genetically related to Fula and Serer. There are two main variants of Wolof: Senegal Wolof, which is the standard form of the language, and Gambian Wolof, which is spoken along with Senegal Wolof by more than 160,000 people in The Gambia. Wolof is a national language of Senegal, where it is spoken by approximately 4.6 million people as a first language (mother tongue). An additional 7.8 million people use Wolof as a lingua franca. Significant numbers of Wolof speakers also are found in France, Mauritania, and Mali.