Atlantic

The Atlantic or West Atlantic languages are a Niger-Congo grouping spoken along the West African coast from Senegal to Liberia, whose two main branches are Senegambian and Mel. Fula, the language of the pastoral Fulani, spread east across the Sahel from Senegal to Sudan.

In the Senegal valley, Fula- and Serer-speaking populations formed the kingdom of Takrur, at its height in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and one of the earliest Muslim states south of the Sahara, while Wolof speakers built the Jolof Empire from the mid-fourteenth century.

From the seventeenth century Fulfulde and Wolof were written in ajami, the Arabic script adapted to West African languages, and Fulani religious poetry in ajami flowered in Futa Jallon from the mid-1700s. The Mel languages of the southern coast remained unwritten vernaculars of farming and fishing communities.