Damay jàng wolof! To consolidate today’s Wolof lesson (Chapter 2 Lesson 1 of the UCLA video course), I wrote this thorough review of articles and demonstratives in Wolof.

Let’s begin! Take the word xaj – dog, of noun class b. The list below shows different ways to alter this word with articles and demonstratives:

xaj bi — the dog ( here )

— dog ( ) xaj bii — this dog

— dog xaj ba — the dog ( there )

— dog ( ) xaj b aa — that dog

— dog xaj yi — the dog s

— the xaj yii — these dogs

— dogs ab xaj – a dog

xaj – dog benn xaj – one dog

We can combine these possibilities with the objective pronoun to say something along the lines of “this is/these are/etc a/the dog/s.” These are the objective pronouns in Wolof:

1s. laa

2s. nga

3s. la

1p. lanu/lañu

2p. ngeen

3p. lañu

These are applied in the following sentences:

L ii xaj la . This is a dog.

ii xaj . This is a dog. Yii xaj lañu. These are dogs.

Likewise, the following sentences follow the same principles (they correspond to Exercise 4):

Lii tééré lë. Yii tééré lañu. Lii tééré alxuraan la? Lii sondeel lë. Yii sondeel lañu? Lii sabar la? Lii këyit lë. Yii sondeen ak këyit lañu. Lii xale lë. Kii Aram lë. Ñii Aram ag Diop lañu?

(I used some vowel harmony in these answers, but since Wolof isn’t entirely standardized, this would be optional.) Notice in #10 that l- was replaced by k- because Aram is a human. The plural class for humans is ñ-.

These types of sentences are known as identificational sentences. They are structured as topic-focus-objective. The topic part of the sentence is the word that refers to the demonstrative adjective and the focus is the word that the objective pronoun emphasizes in the sentence.

To negate an identificational sentence, we use du. To use du, drop the objective pronoun and place du between the topic and the focus. So, Lii xaj la is negated as Lii du xaj — This is not a dog. Du is conjugated as follows:

1s. duma

2s. doo

3s. du

1p. dunu

2p. dungeen

3p. duñu

Here’s an example: Lii du tééré wolof; lii tééré faranse lë. — This is not a Wolofbook; this is a French book.

Ba beneen!