Essential French phrases

The Wolof name for Saint-Louis, and the one locals actually use. A person from here is a Ndar-Ndar. Learn it on day one: using 'Saint-Louis' exclusively marks you as someone who arrived last week.

The mixed-race women traders who ran much of Saint-Louis's commerce in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and whose houses, with their wrought-iron balconies and interior courtyards, are what UNESCO listed. The word explains half the architecture on the island.

The fishing quarter on the Langue de Barbarie, one of the most densely populated places in West Africa, wedged between the river and the ocean. Everything Saint-Louis argues about — erosion, migration, fishing rights — argues about Guet Ndar first.

The breach. In October 2003 a four-metre channel was cut through the sand spit south of the city to relieve a flood. It became the river's new mouth and has widened to several kilometres. Every conversation about the coast starts here.

The opening of every interaction, in a country that is around 97% Muslim. Saint-Louis also has an old and visible Catholic minority and a cathedral from 1828, so you will occasionally get 'bonjour' back — the greeting still opens the door.

'How are you?' in Wolof, followed by questions about your family and household before anyone reaches the point. In a small city where everyone knows everyone this ritual is longer, not shorter, than in Dakar.

Thank you, answered with 'we share it'. The reply is the point: it refuses the idea that a favour creates a debt.

Senegal's national dish, and UNESCO's 2021 citation says its know-how originated in the fishing communities of the island of Saint-Louis. Nobody here will let that pass unremarked, and the local version is a point of civic pride rather than a menu item.

Green tea in three rounds over a small burner, bitter to sweet, taking an hour or more. On the island it is the default afternoon, and leaving after the first glass is a small insult.

Coffee ground with Guinea pepper, sold from thermoses everywhere for a couple of hundred francs. Named for the Mouride holy city; drunk without reference to it.

The great illuminated paper lanterns paraded through the streets at Christmas and on festival nights, a Saint-Louis tradition traced to the signares' processions to midnight mass. If someone says the fanals are out, go and look.

Hospitality as an obligation. Saint-Louis trades on it commercially — the guest houses on the island are a real industry — and practises it privately in a way that catches visitors off guard.

A white person or foreigner. Almost never hostile, but in a city with real tourism it is also the signal that a price has just doubled — 'ñaata la ?' in Wolof is the counter.

The long painted wooden fishing canoe. Saint-Louis's fleet is famous, and the same boats are the ones that leave for the Canary Islands — so the word carries two very different conversations depending on who says it.