Wiktionary:About Wolof

This is a Wiktionary policy, guideline or common practices page. Specifically it is a policy think tank, working to develop a formal policy. Policies – Entries: CFI - EL - NORM - NPOV - QUOTE - REDIR - DELETE. Languages: LT - AXX. Others: BLOCK - BOTS - VOTES.

Wolof is a Niger-Congo language spoken in West Africa. This page details standard practice to be followed in all Wolof entries.

Dialects

All dialectal words should be marked; Senegalese Wolof is the default dialect for all entries, but words restricted to Senegal should still be marked as such. "Urban Wolof" or "Pidgin Wolof" should also be marked. Dialects do not get independent L2 headers, but instead are marked with {{label}} on the definition line and {{qualifier}} elsewhere.

Orthography and scripts

The Latin orthography that should be used is the one dictated for Standard Wolof by the Centre de linguistique appliquée de Dakar. Acute accents should only be placed on the first letter of long vowels, as in jigéen. Spellings like jigéén can be created as alternative spellings, but are not encouraged; spellings like jigeen that could cause confusion as to the pronunciation can be created as misspellings. Neither of these can be created unless attested. Similarly, grave accents should be used for a lengthened a followed by a long consonant, as in jàmm, with jámm as an alternative spelling and jamm as a misspelling.

Entries in Arabic script (Wolofal) should always be alternative spellings that point to a lemma in Latin script. They should only be created when attested. Garay script is not encoded in Unicode and therefore cannot be used on Wiktionary.

Templates

All nouns should use {{wo-noun}} in the headword line. To indicate the class consonant of a Wolof noun, for instance "w" for the word "wéñ", then write the noun template as {{wo-noun|wi}}

Nearly every Wolof noun (except proper nouns) has a noun class, that is the consonant used in the correct determiner. For example bés bi means "the day". Its noun class is simply called "b". Any grammar manual will show the different determiners besides that can be used. The noun class cannot be reliably determined by the sound nor meaning of the word itself, it can only be attested from usage. Wolof nouns usually have one consonant class (though variation does exist).

Attestation

Only one use or mention is necessary to attest a word in Wolof, provided the source is primarily in Wolof or concerned with the language specifically. Any spelling can be used to attest a word in the standard orthography used here as described above, but for the purpose of attesting any spellings that deviate from this standard, only that exact spelling counts.