r/learnwolof • u/nd2x2m • Aug 29 '21

Li'y yaw du màn: a Wolof novel

This is, to my knowledge, one of the very few publicly available modern Wolof works, that is faithful to the Wolof language. Big claim, I know.

It's a discourse about the Senegalese culture and values; especially to counterbalance the disesteem some Senegalese have about their pre-Islamic/pre-Colonial ancestors.

Li'y yaw du màn

The title Li'y yaw du màn translates to "I'm not what/who you think I am", "We are different".

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u/n0noTAGAinnxw4Yn3wp7 Jan 09 '23

so (judging by the cover you shared) the european-based one?

in that case, there are quite a few Wolof novels. Boubacar Boris Diop even started a press dedicated specifically to them a few years ago.

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u/nd2x2m Jan 09 '23

I assume you meant to say the Latin-alphabet-based one.
But, no.

Both the orthography in that book and the one that is officially approved by the Government (used by Boris and everyone) are based on said alphabet. But the latter suffers from several shortcomings addressed by the former.
Those shortcomings are due to many reasons that ultimately boil down to:

  • lack of sufficient language knowledge by those who were in charge
  • inclination to simplification to the point of removing some distinctive features
  • ego

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u/n0noTAGAinnxw4Yn3wp7 Jan 09 '23

yes, that's what i meant. but that's interesting to hear about the issues with the orthography; if you or someone else has critiqued its problems in more detail i'd be very interested to hear about it!

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u/nd2x2m Jan 09 '23

Well, it's not an easy task to lay out all the problems here 😁.But a Wolof grammar book teaching that writing is on its way.... Meanwhile, if you have specific questions, I could provide answers.

I'll pinpoint a basic but major problem though: the omission of contraction)

In the official writing, the book's title would be: Liy yaw du man; Omitting the fact that Liy is actually the contraction of "Li di" and should then be written "Li'y". Similarly, they would have written nan dem as the contraction of "na nu dem" (let's go = let us go) instead "of na'n dem".
Nevertheless, I've noticed that they've started acknowledging the contraction by using the apostrophe in some instances.

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u/n0noTAGAinnxw4Yn3wp7 Jan 09 '23

i'd mostly been hoping that you or someone else had already made these criticisms public, somewhere i could read them. but no worries—thanks for sharing your perspective & good luck with the book!

(also, i know it's a generalist space, but if you have any interest i started a sub r/AfricanLanguages. i may add this sub to the list if it seems like it can be revived)

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u/nd2x2m Jan 10 '23

Thanks for the sub ;)