Jola languages
Jola (Joola) or Diola is a dialect continuum spoken in Senegal, the Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau. It belongs to the Bak branch of the Niger–Congo language family. Name. The name "Jola" is an exonym, and may be from the Mandinka word "joolaa" 'one who pays back'. There is no widespread endonym used by all of the Jola speakers. Languages. The primary branches of Jola proper and to some extent Central Jola are not mutually intelligible. The main varieties are: Bayot. Bayot, spoken around Ziguinchor, is grammatically Jola, apart from a non-Jola pronominal system. However, perhaps half  its vocabulary is non-Jola and even non-Atlantic. It may therefore be a language isolate with substantial Jola borrowing (relexification). In any case, Bayot is clearly distinct from (other) Jola languages. Reconstruction. Some Proto-Joola reconstructions of stable lexical roots by Segerer (2016) are: