Ali Mijiyawa
2025
The Best of Both Worlds: Exploring Wolofal in the Context of NLP
Ngoc Tan Le
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Ali Mijiyawa
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Abdoulahat Leye
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Fatiha Sadat
Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on NLP for Languages Using Arabic Script
This paper examines the three writing systems used for the Wolof language: the Latin script, the Ajami script (Wolofal), and the Garay script. Although the Latin alphabet is now the official standard for writing Wolof in Senegal, Garay and Ajami still play an important cultural and religious role, especially the latter. This article focuses specifically on Ajami, a system based on the Arabic script, and describes its history, its use, and its modern writings. We also analyze the challenges and prospects of these systems from the perspective of language preservation.