Wolof

Wolof, a Niger-Congo language spoken by approximately 8.5 million people, is a major lingua franca in Senegal, Gambia, and Mauritania. It is primarily written in the Latin alphabet but also has Perso-Arabic and Garay script variants. With an SVO word order and an agglutinative structure, Wolof lacks grammatical cases but has a rich system of noun classes as well as pronouns which reflect the tense of the verb. Historically an oral language, Wolof has a strong presence in music, storytelling, and contemporary media. While French remains dominant in formal settings, Wolof continues to expand its role in education, literature, and digital communication.