"THE Jalloof, or, as it is variously written, the
Woloff, Guiloff, or Ouoloff language, is spoken from the
Atlantic to Podor, along the south bank of the Senegal from west to east, and
from the mouth of that
river southward to Cape Verde. In the immediate neighbourhood of Cape
Verde it surrounds, and
probably isolates, a small tract of country in which the Sereres language is
vernacular. The Jalloof
also prevails southward of Cape Verde, as far as the regions on the Gambia,
in which Mandingo is
predominant.
The Jalloofs are black, but their features are cast more in the
Asiatic than in the African mould.
They are active and enterprising, like the Mandingoes, and in point of
civilisation are superior to most
of the tribes of Guinea. Some among them are Mosl_ms, the rest are
Pagans. Their language has
been considered a branch of the Mandingo family, but it has in fact very
few words in common with it;
whereas the dialect of Bambara presents a
decided affinity with the Mandingo.
It is copious, and very
expressive, but is now so much mixed with
French and
Arabic words, in colloquial intercourse
with
Moorish and European traders, that half of the
language, according to Mr. Macbrair, is lost in these
foreign additions. But the language itself, in its own purity, as it
is spoken in the interior, is free from
any great admixture of foreign idioms.
The Woloff, or Jalloof, is an extremely soft and sonorous
language; simple in construction, and
easy to be acquired. Yet at the same time it presents features of
combination which one is surprised
to find in an idiom spoken by tribes apparently so little civilised.
They have two numbers; pronouns
in which one may trace the analogy of the
Coptic or Shemitic ones; and the
conjugation of their verbs,
in which there are no participles, is made, like that of most African
languages, by means of particles
affixed and of pronouns prefixed to the root. But this root is capable
of a great variety of meaning,
according to the suffix it receives. Thus, sop{a(}, to love,
becomes sopé, to love tenderly; sopanté, to
love
one another; sopou, to love oneself; soplo, to cause to love;
sopi, to be about to love; sopati, to love
again; sopadi, to love but little; sopoú, not to love;
sopatou, to love no more, etc. This combination
is found of course in other languages, but in a less degree than in
Woloff.
The Jalloof language, as Mungo Park remarked, has long been
studied by Europeans engaged in
the Senegal trade. The honour of reducing it to
writing was reserved for a Quaker lady. A grammar
and dictionary were afterwards published by Mr. Dard, a Frenchman at the head
of schools in Sene-
gambia. Hannah Kilham, who belonged to a Quaker family of Leeds,
devoted her time and energies
to the instruction and moral elevation of the Jalloof and other negro tribes,
and at length sacrificed her
life in the cause. She compiled a book of reading
lessons in Jalloof, among which were introduced
some passages from the Scriptures
translated by herself. The work, which was printed towards the
close of the last century, was found to be perfectly intelligible to
the Jalloofs. Dongo Karry, a young
Moh_mm_dan native, on hearing a few sentences read,
exclaimed, "Ah! that is Jalloof;" and imme-
diately gave the signification of what he had heard in
English, with which he was tolerably
conversant.
Afterwards, when some passages of Scripture were read to
him from the same book, he cried out with
emphasis, "Great and good! Great and
good!" It is to be hoped that the commencement made by
Hannah Kilham, in preparing a translation of the Scriptures
for this people, will be followed by the
preparation of a complete version: at present the Jalloofs possess no entire
portion of the sacred volume
in their own language."
--The Bible of Every Land. (1860, Second
Edition) Samuel Bagster [Info only]
