Editing Wolof language (section)

==Phonology==
===Vowels===
The vowels are as follows:<ref>Unseth, 2009.</ref>

{|class="wikitable"
|+Vowels
! rowspan=2|
! colspan=2 style="font-size:smaller"| [[Front vowel|Front]]
! colspan=2 style="font-size:smaller"| [[Central vowel|Central]]
! colspan=2 style="font-size:smaller"| [[Back vowel|Back]]
|-
! style="font-size:80%"| short
! style="font-size:80%"| long
! style="font-size:80%"| short
! style="font-size:80%"| long
! style="font-size:80%"| short
! style="font-size:80%"| long
|-align=center
! style="font-size:smaller"| [[Close vowel|Close]]
| {{IPA link|i}} {{angbr|i}}
| {{IPA link|iː}}
| style="background-color:gray"|
| style="background-color:gray"|
| {{IPA link|u}} {{angbr|u}}
| {{IPA link|uː}}
|-align=center
! style="font-size:smaller"| [[Close-mid vowel|Close-mid]]
| {{IPA link|e}} {{angbr|é}}
| {{IPA link|eː}}
| style="background-color:gray"|
| style="background-color:gray"|
| {{IPA link|o}} {{angbr|ó}}
| {{IPA link|oː}}
|-align=center
! style="font-size:smaller"| [[Mid vowel|mid]]
| style="background-color:gray"|
| style="background-color:gray"|
| {{IPA link|ə}} {{angbr|ë}}
| 
| style="background-color:gray"|
| style="background-color:gray"|
|-align=center
! style="font-size:smaller"| [[Open-mid vowel|Open-mid]]
| {{IPA link|ɛ}} {{angbr|e}}
| {{IPA link|ɛː}}
| style="background-color:gray"|
| style="background-color:gray"|
| {{IPA link|ɔ}} {{angbr|o}}
| {{IPA link|ɔː}}
|-align=center
! style="font-size:smaller"| [[Open vowel|Open]]
| style="background-color:gray"|
| style="background-color:gray"|
| {{IPA link|ä|a}} {{angbr|a}}
| {{IPA link|äː|aː}}
| style="background-color:gray"|
| style="background-color:gray"|
|}
There may be an additional low vowel, or this may be confused with orthographic ''à''.{{citation needed|date=January 2014}}

All vowels may be long (written double) or short.<ref>Long ''ëë'' is rare (Torrence 2013:10).</ref> {{IPA|/aː/}} is written {{angbr|à}} before a long (prenasalized or geminate) consonant (example ''làmbi'' "arena"). When ''é'' and ''ó'' are written double, the accent mark is often only on the first letter.

Vowels fall into two [[vowel harmony|harmonizing]] sets according to [[advanced tongue root|ATR]]:  ''i u é ó ë'' are +ATR, ''e o a'' are the −ATR analogues of ''é ó ë''.  For example,<ref>Torrence 2013:11</ref>

{{interlinear|indent=3|glossing3=yes
|Lekk-oon-ngeen
|{{IPA|/lɛkːɔːnŋɡɛːn/}}
|eat-PAST-FIN.2PL
|'You (plural) ate.'}}

{{interlinear|indent=3|glossing3=yes
|Dóor-óon-ngéen
|{{IPA|/doːroːnŋɡeːn/}}
|hit-PAST-FIN.2PL
|'You (plural) hit.'}}

There are no −ATR analogs of the high vowels ''i u''. They trigger +ATR harmony in suffixes when they occur in the root, but in a suffix, they may be transparent to vowel harmony.

The vowels of some suffixes or enclitics do not harmonize with preceding vowels. In most cases following vowels harmonize with them. That is, they reset the harmony, as if they were a separate word. However, when a suffix/clitic contains a high vowel (+ATR) that occurs after a −ATR root, any further suffixes harmonize with the root. That is, the +ATR suffix/clitic is "transparent" to vowel harmony. An example is the negative ''-u-'' in,

{{interlinear|indent=3|glossing3=yes
|Door-u-ma-leen-fa
|{{IPA|/dɔːrumalɛːnfa/}}
|begin-NEG-1SG-3PL-LOC
|'I did not begin them there.'}}

where harmony would predict ''*door-u-më-léén-fë''.
That is, ''I or U'' behave as if they are their own −ATR analogs.

Authors differ in whether they indicate vowel harmony in writing, as well as whether they write clitics as separate words.

===Consonants===
Consonants in word-initial position are as follows:<ref name=Ka>Omar Ka, 1994, ''Wolof Phonology and Morphology''</ref>
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"
|+ '''Wolof consonants'''
|-
! colspan=2 | 
! [[Labial consonant|Labial]]
! [[Alveolar consonant|Alveolar]]
! [[Palatal consonant|Palatal]]
! [[Velar consonant|Velar]]
! [[Uvular consonant|Uvular]]
! [[Glottal consonant|Glottal]]
|-
! colspan=2 | [[Nasal consonant|Nasal]]
| {{IPA link|m}} {{angbr|m}} || {{IPA link|n}} {{angbr|n}} || {{IPA link|ɲ}} {{angbr|ñ}} || {{IPA link|ŋ}} {{angbr|ŋ}}<ref>Or {{angbr|n̈}} in some texts.</ref> || || 
|-
! rowspan=3 | [[Plosive consonant|Plosive]]
! <small>[[Prenasalized consonant|prenasalized]]</small>
| {{IPA link|ᵐb}} {{angbr|mb}} || {{IPA link|ⁿd}} {{angbr|nd}} || {{IPA link|ᶮɟ}} {{angbr|nj}} || {{IPA link|ᵑɡ}} {{angbr|ng}} || || 
|-
! <small>[[voice (phonetics)|voiced]]</small>
| {{IPA link|b}} {{angbr|b}} || {{IPA link|d}} {{angbr|d}} || {{IPA link|ɟ}} {{angbr|j}} || {{IPA link|ɡ}} {{angbr|g}} || || 
|-
! <small>[[voicelessness|voiceless]]</small>
| {{IPA link|p}} {{angbr|p}} || {{IPA link|t}} {{angbr|t}} || {{IPA link|c}} {{angbr|c}} || {{IPA link|k}} {{angbr|k}} || {{IPA link|q}} {{angbr|q}} || {{IPA link|ʔ}}
|-
! colspan=2 | [[Fricative consonant|Fricative]]
| {{IPA link|f}} {{angbr|f}} || {{IPA link|s}} {{angbr|s}} || || colspan="2" | {{IPA link|x}}~{{IPA link|χ}} {{angbr|x}} || 
|-
! colspan=2 | [[Trill consonant|Trill]]
| || {{IPA link|r}} {{angbr|r}} || || || || 
|-
! colspan=2 | [[Approximant consonant|Approximant]]
| {{IPA link|w}} {{angbr|w}} || {{IPA link|l}} {{angbr|l}} || {{IPA link|j}} {{angbr|y}} || || || 
|}

All simple nasals, oral stops apart from ''q'' and glottal, and the sonorants ''l r y w'' may be [[gemination|geminated]] (doubled), though geminate ''r'' only occurs in [[ideophone]]s.<ref name=USPC>Pape Amadou Gaye, ''Practical Cours in / Cours Practique en Wolof: An Audio–Aural Approach.''</ref><ref>Some are restricted or rare, and sources disagree about this. Torrence (2013) claims that all consonants but prenasalized stops may be geminate, while Diouf (2009) does not list the fricatives, ''q'', or ''r y w'', and does not recognize glottal stop in the inventor.  The differences may be dialectical or because some sounds are rare.</ref> (Geminate consonants are written double.) ''Q'' is inherently geminate and may occur in an initial position; otherwise, geminate consonants and consonant clusters, including ''nt, nc, nk, nq'' ({{IPA|[ɴq]}}), are restricted to word-medial and -final position.  In the final place, geminate consonants may be followed by a faint [[epenthetic]] [[schwa]] vowel.

Of the consonants in the chart above, ''p d c k'' do not occur in the intermediate or final position, being replaced by ''f r s'' and zero, though geminate ''pp dd cc kk'' are common. Phonetic ''p c k'' do occur finally, but only as allophones of ''b j g'' due to [[final devoicing]].

[[Minimal pair]]s:<ref>Diouf (2009)</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://resourcepage.gambia.dk/ftp/wollof.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070623235249/http://resourcepage.gambia.dk/ftp/wollof.pdf |archive-date=2007-06-23 |url-status=live|title=Wollof - English Dictionary|date=1995|publisher=Peace Corps The Gambia|access-date=October 23, 2018}}</ref>

: ''bët'' ("eye") - ''bëtt'' ("to find")
: ''boy'' ("to catch fire") - ''boyy'' ("to be glimmering")
: ''dag'' ("a royal servant") - ''dagg'' ("to cut")
: ''dëj'' ("funeral") - ''dëjj'' ("[[cunt]]")
: ''fen'' ("to (tell a) lie") - ''fenn'' ("somewhere, nowhere")
: ''gal'' ("white gold") - ''gall'' ("to regurgitate")
: ''goŋ'' ("baboon") - ''goŋŋ'' (a kind of bed) 
: ''gëm'' ("to believe") - ''gëmm'' ("to close one's eyes")
: ''Jaw'' (a family name) - ''jaww'' ("heaven")
: ''nëb'' ("rotten") - ''nëbb'' ("to hide")
: ''woñ'' ("thread") - ''woññ'' ("to count")

===Tones===
Unlike most sub-Saharan African languages, Wolof has no [[Tone (linguistics)|tones]]. Other non-tonal languages of sub-Saharan Africa include [[Amharic]], [[Swahili language|Swahili]] and [[Fula language|Fula]].