The Impact of Arabic on Wolof Language

This research aims to study Wolof people in terms of their origin, background, and language. It will also discuss the factors that led Arabic to spread among the members of this tribe, such as the religious factor after the spreading of Islam in the West of Africa (i.e. Mauritania, Senegal, and Gambia), where Wolof people reside. The commercial factor also affected the spreading of Arabic language in the aforementioned areas. In addition to that, the emigration factor of some Arab tribes from Egypt and the Arab peninsula that resided in the far west of Africa for economic and political reasons had an impact on the spreading. Finally, the study will show the impact of Arabic Language on Wolof Language as the following:  1) the Arabic phonetics and their alternatives in this language; 2) the borrowed vocabulary in Wolof language from Arabic; and 3) Conduct a contrastive analysis in verb conjugation, masculinity and femininity, and definiteness and indefiniteness between the two languages to know how far Arabic Language has impacted Wolof Language.