an Atlantic language (Atlantic languages) of the Niger-Congo language family genetically related to Fula and Serer. There are two main variants of Wolof: Senegal Wolof, which is the standard form of the language, and Gambian Wolof, which is spoken along with Senegal Wolof by more than 160,000 people in The Gambia (Gambia, The). Wolof is a national language of Senegal, where it is spoken by approximately 4.6 million people as a first language (mother tongue). An additional 7.8 million people use Wolof as a lingua franca. Significant numbers of Wolof speakers also are found in France, Mauritania, and Mali.