Ousmane, au téléphone — Ousmane, on the Phone

French in Senegal

French is the official language of Senegal, used in government, the courts, formal education and much of the written press. It is not, however, the language most Senegalese speak at home. Wolof is the country's main lingua franca, spoken by a large majority as a first or second language, especially in cities, and a number of other languages, including Pulaar, Serer, Diola, Mandinka and Soninke, have the status of national languages. Many people speak several of them. Linguists describe French in such countries as a second language rather than a foreign one: it is learned mostly at school, but it is present everywhere in public life. Because it is learned largely through school and written texts, Senegalese speakers of French are sometimes perceived in France as speaking unusually formally, and the French of Senegal also has its own words, such as essencerie for a gas station, a coinage often attributed to Léopold Sédar Senghor, the country's first president, a poet and a member of the Académie française. The terms mother tongue, first language and second language are not interchangeable in linguistics, and researchers define them carefully, because in multilingual settings a person's first language, best language and everyday language may be three different things.