Wolof
Senegal's national lingua franca
Wolof is spoken as a first or second language by the large majority of people in Senegal, where it functions as the country's de facto national lingua franca alongside official French, and it's also spoken in the Gambia and Mauritania. It belongs to the Atlantic branch of the Niger-Congo family, a different branch from the Bantu languages of East and Southern Africa.
Writing system
What counts as correct
Wolof is written in the Latin alphabet with a few additions — ñ and ŋ represent nasal sounds without a plain-letter equivalent — and it uses doubled vowels and consonants (aa, bb) to mark a longer sound rather than a typo or emphasis. Both the extra letters and the doubling change meaning, not just pronunciation.
Why it matters
Precision, not approximation
A single letter or a shortened vowel in Wolof can turn one word into another entirely. Itumo checks that the extra letters and doubled vowels or consonants come out exactly right, in both directions, rather than getting quietly normalized away.
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Translate Wolof with Itumo
Pair Wolof with any of Itumo's other languages — including direct African-to-African translation.
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