Serer, sometimes called Serer-Sine "Serer proper" (Seereer-Siin, etc.) after its prestige dialect

Prestige dialect

In sociolinguistics, prestige describes the level of respect accorded to a language or dialect as compared to that of other languages or dialects in a speech community. The concept of prestige in sociolinguistics is closely related to that of prestige or class within a society...

, is a language of the Senegambian branch of Niger–Congo

Niger–Congo languages

The Niger–Congo languages constitute one of the world's major language families, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area, number of speakers, and number of distinct languages. They may constitute the world's largest language family in terms of distinct languages, although this question...

 spoken by 1.2 million people in Senegal

Senegal

Senegal , officially the Republic of Senegal , is a country in western Africa. It owes its name to the Sénégal River that borders it to the east and north...

 and 30,000 in The Gambia

The Gambia

The Republic of The Gambia, commonly referred to as The Gambia, or Gambia , is a country in West Africa. Gambia is the smallest country on mainland Africa, surrounded by Senegal except for a short coastline on the Atlantic Ocean in the west....

. It is the principal language of the Serer people

Serer people

The Serer people along with the Jola people are acknowledged to be the oldest inhabitants of The Senegambia....

.

Classification

Serer is one of the Senegambian languages, which are characterized by consonant mutation

Consonant mutation

Consonant mutation is when a consonant in a word changes according to its morphological and/or syntactic environment.Mutation phenomena occur in languages around the world. A prototypical example of consonant mutation is the initial consonant mutation of all modern Celtic languages...

. The traditional classification of Atlantic is that of Sapir (1971), which found that Serer was closest to Fulani. However, a widely cited misreading of the data by Wilson (1989) inadvertently exchanged Serer for Wolof

Wolof language

Wolof is a language spoken in Senegal, The Gambia, and Mauritania, and is the native language of the Wolof people. Like the neighbouring languages Serer and Fula, it belongs to the Atlantic branch of the Niger–Congo language family...

. Serere (2009, 2010) confirms Sapir's findings on this point; Serer and Fulani are closely related (they share noun-class suffixes not found elsewhere in Atlantic), while Wolof is relatively distant from either.

Dialects of Serer are Serer Sine (the prestige dialect

Prestige dialect

In sociolinguistics, prestige describes the level of respect accorded to a language or dialect as compared to that of other languages or dialects in a speech community. The concept of prestige in sociolinguistics is closely related to that of prestige or class within a society...

), Segum, Fadyut-Palmerin, Dyegueme (Gyegem), and Niominka. They are mutually intelligible.

Not all Serer people

Serer people

The Serer people along with the Jola people are acknowledged to be the oldest inhabitants of The Senegambia....

 speak Serer. About 200,000 speak Cangin languages. Because the speakers are ethnically Serer, these are commonly thought to be Serer dialects. However, they are not closely related: Serer is significantly closer to Fulani than it is to Cangin.

Consonants

Consonants

Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals...	Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...	Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....	Uvular Uvular consonant Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be plosives, fricatives, nasal stops, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and...	Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Plosive	Voiceless	p	t	c	k	q	ʔ
	Voiced	b	d	ɟ	ɡ
	Prenasalized	ᵐb	ⁿd	ᶮɟ	ᵑɡ	ᶰɢ
Implosive Implosive consonant Implosive consonants are stops with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. That is, the airstream is controlled by moving the glottis downward in addition to expelling air from the lungs. Therefore, unlike the purely glottalic ejective consonants, implosives can...	Voiceless	ɓ̥	ɗ̥	ʄ̥
	Voiced	ɓ	ɗ	ʄ
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...		f	s		x		h
Flap Flap consonant In phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator is thrown against another.-Contrast with stops and trills:...			ɾ
Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...			l	j	w

Serer greetings

The following greetings and responses are spoken in most regions of Senegal that have Serer speakers.

Nam fi'o? = How are you doing?
Mexe meen. (prounounced may hay men) = I am here.

Ta mbind na? = How is the family?
Owa maa. = It is good.

In Senegalese culture, greetings are very important. Sometimes, people will spend several minutes greeting each other.

People

• Ethnic groups in Senegal
  Ethnic groups in Senegal
  Ethnic groups in Senegal are numerous for such a small area, and subgroups can be distinguished within several of them. According to one 2005 estimate, there are twenty groups of varying size....
  
  

Ethnic Serer

• Serer people
  Serer people
  The Serer people along with the Jola people are acknowledged to be the oldest inhabitants of The Senegambia....
  
  
• Serer-Niominka
• Serer-Noon
  Serer-Noon
  The Serer-Noon are an ethnic people who occupy western Senegal. They are part of the Serer people.- Territory :...
  
  
• Serer-Safene
• Serer-Ndut
  Serer-Ndut
  The Serer-Ndut also spelt are an ethnic group in Senegal numbering 38600They are part of the Serer people who collectively make up the third largest ethnic group in Senegal...
  
  
• Serer-Palor