Wolof was originally associated with a Lebu ethnic group whose traces were found along the frontier between Senegal and Mauritania. The Lebu later became a small minority concentrated in the Cape Verde peninsula. This history is used to show that a language’s present extent may differ sharply from the narrower community in which it first developed.

Urbanization in Senegal is described as accelerating the expansion of Wolof culture and language. In the process, many dialects associated with Serer, Lebu, Fulani, Dyola, and Noon are being effaced. The passage frames this not simply as linguistic diffusion but as a transformation of the cultural balance among peoples that had played important roles in the region’s history.

Wolof is also included among languages that have outgrown their original ethnic and geographic frameworks to become common languages of civilization. Its spread demonstrates how political, economic, and cultural forces can make one language a vehicle of communication among populations of different origins. The extract nevertheless presents this process as potentially destructive when it leaves older dialects and cultures only as remnants.