Wolof, a lesson according to me

This post is not incredibly revelant, but who's to say you have to read it?

Disclaimer: In Senegal, I choose to speak Franglof (French + English + Wolof). Hopefully, over time, the "-lof" part will start to take over.


We've started Wolof refresher courses. Not originally budgeted for the full-year student's spring semester, Vu (a linguistic student) convinced Waly (our program coordinator) to give us 8 hours of Wolof class. I really appreciate the refresher, but I forgot how hard is to concentrate on learning a second language for 2 straight hours! I went home from our first class on Tuesday with a headache and falling asleep while walking. Luckily the power was out until 9pm and so I got my first good sleep since coming back to Dakar - sleep is just not respected here. I fall asleep everynight to the hallway light illuminating my room and the TV blaring either a brazilian soap opera or muslim prayer. And then when my mom finally goes to bed around midnight, she continues to blast religious chants from speakers in her room.


But moving on...


A few tidbits from Wolof class:

*I am gonna open a weight loss center called "duggal ak jaayfonde, gennal sew" (enter with a big bum, leave skinny).

*The Senegalese do not like to have their name written in red ink. Britta said that, at her health internship, people would yell at her if she started to write their name with a red pen.

*The following words all sound similar, at many times to the point that I accidentally call people "urinate" rather than "skinny" or ask to for "urinate" rather than "yogurt". At it is usually that way rather than using "yogurt" instead of "urinate". They are just different tonal differentiations in the vowels.

skinny (adj.), yogurt (noun), and urinate (verb)

weak (adj.), arrive (verb), ugly (adj.), and sew (verb)

to be lost (verb) and to eat dinner (verb)

One of my favorite pasttimes is making my idea of Wolof tongue-twisters, using similar sounding words in the same sentence. Sometimes they are just short sentences that are not that hard to say, but it's amusing nonetheless.

Ex. Xolal xol bi xar. Xar bi mungiy xaral xal xol am.

(Look at the heart of the sheep. The sheep is waiting for watermelon for his heart.)

Ex. Balaa may ne*w, niew naay. Wante sama niew, dafa niaw.

(Before I arrive, I will sew. But my sewing, it is ugly.)