Gullah language
Encyclopedia
Gullah is a creole language
spoken by the Gullah
people (also called "Geechees" within the community), an African American
population living on the Sea Islands
and the coastal region of the U.S. states of North Carolina, South Carolina
, Georgia and northeast Florida
.
The Gullah language is based on English
, with strong influences from West
and Central Africa
n languages such as Mandinka
, Wolof
, Bambara
, Fula
, Mende
, Vai
, Akan
, Ewe
, Yoruba
, Igbo
, Hausa
, Kongo
, Umbundu
and Kimbundu.
These two theories are not necessarily mutually exclusive. While it is very likely that some of the Gullahs’ ancestors came from Africa with a working knowledge of Guinea Coast Creole English, it is clear that most slaves taken to America did not have prior experience with a creole language in Africa. It is also clear that the Gullah language evolved in unique circumstances in coastal South Carolina and Georgia and acquired its own distinctive form in that new environment.
The vocabulary of Gullah comes primarily from English, but it also has words of African origin. Some of the most common African loanwords are: cootuh ("turtle
"), oonuh ("you"), nyam ("eat"), buckruh ("white man"), pojo ("heron
"), swonguh ("proud") and benne ("sesame
").
of Sierra Leone
, Bahamian Dialect, Jamaican Creole
, Bajan Creole and Belizean Kriol
. It is speculated that these languages use English as a lexifier (or vocabularies derived largely from English) and that their syntax (grammars and sentence structures) are strongly influenced by African languages but research by Salikoko Mufwene
and others suggests that non-standard Englishes may have also influenced Gullah's (and other creoles') syntactical features.
Gullah is most closely related to Afro-Seminole Creole
, spoken in scattered Black Seminole communities in Oklahoma, Texas, and Northern Mexico. The Black Seminoles' ancestors were Gullahs who escaped from slavery in coastal South Carolina and Georgia in the 18th and 19th centuries and fled into the Florida wilderness. They emigrated from Florida after the Second Seminole War
(1835–42). Their modern descendants in the West speak a conservative form of Gullah resembling the language of 19th-century plantation slaves.
did a seminal study of the Gullah language based on field research in rural communities in coastal South Carolina and Georgia. Turner found that Gullah is strongly influenced by African languages in its sound system, vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, and semantic system. Turner identified over 300 loanword
s from various African languages
in Gullah and almost 4,000 African personal names used by Gullah people. He also found Gullahs living in remote sea-side settlements who could recite songs and story fragments and do simple counting in the Mende
, Vai
and Fulani languages of West Africa. Turner published his findings in a classic work called Africanisms
in the Gullah Dialect
(1949). His book, now in its fourth edition, was most recently reprinted with a new introduction in 2002.
Before Lorenzo Turner's work, mainstream scholars viewed Gullah speech as substandard English, a hodgepodge of mispronounced words and corrupted grammar which uneducated black people developed in their efforts to copy the speech of their English, Irish, Scottish and French Huguenot
slave owners. But Turner's study was so well researched and detailed in its evidence of African influences in Gullah that academics soon reversed course. After Turner's book was published in 1949, scholars began coming to the Gullah region regularly to study African influences in Gullah language and culture.
tales about the antics of "Brer Rabbit"
, "Brer Fox" and "Brer Bear"
, "Brer Wolf", etc.; human trickster tales about clever and self-assertive slaves; and morality tales designed to impart moral teaching to children.
Several white American writers collected Gullah stories in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The best collections were made by Charles Colcock Jones, Jr.
from Georgia and Albert Henry Stoddard from South Carolina. Jones (a Confederate officer during the Civil War) and Stoddard were both planter-class whites who grew up speaking Gullah with the slaves (and later, freedmen) on their families' plantations. Another collection was made by Abigail Christensen, a Northern woman whose parents came to the Lowcountry after the Civil War to assist the newly freed slaves. Ambrose E. Gonzales
, another writer of South Carolina planter-class background, also wrote original stories in 19th-century Gullah, based on Gullah literary forms. Gonzales' works are well remembered in South Carolina today.
The linguistic accuracy of these writings has been questioned because of the authors' social backgrounds. Nonetheless, these works provide the best available information on the Gullah language as it was spoken in its more conservative form during the 19th century.
and Georgia. Although some scholars argue that Gullah has changed little since the 19th century and that the majority of speakers have always been bidialectal, it is likely that at least some decreolization
has taken place. In other words, some African-influenced grammatical structures that were present a century ago are less prevalent in the language today. Nonetheless, Gullah is still understood as a creole language and is certainly distinct from Standard American English.
For generations, outsiders stigmatized
Gullah speakers, regarding their language as a mark of ignorance and low social status. As a result, Gullah people
developed the habit of speaking their language only within the confines of their own homes and local communities, hence the difficulty in enumerating speakers and assessing decreolization. They avoided using it in public situations outside the safety of their home areas and many experienced discrimination even within the Gullah community. Some speculate that the prejudice of outsiders may have helped maintain the language. Others suggest that a kind of valorization or "covert prestige" remained for many community members and that this complex pride has insulated the language from obliteration.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas
was raised as a Gullah speaker in coastal Georgia. When asked why he has little to say during hearings of the court, he told a high school
student that the ridicule he received for his Gullah speech as a young man caused him to develop the habit of listening rather than speaking in public. Thomas's English-speaking grandfather raised him after the age of six in Savannah.
In recent years educated Gullah people have begun promoting use of Gullah openly as a symbol of cultural pride. In 2005, Gullah community leaders announced the completion of a translation of the New Testament into modern Gullah, a project that took more than 20 years to complete.
This story, called , was first published in 1888 by story collector Charles Colcock Jones, Jr.:
Toepke, Alvaro, Angel Serrano, and California Newsreel (Firm). 1998. The language you cry in. San Francisco, CA: California Newsreel. videorecording.
Creole language
A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...
spoken by the Gullah
Gullah
The Gullah are African Americans who live in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and Georgia, which includes both the coastal plain and the Sea Islands....
people (also called "Geechees" within the community), an African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
population living on the Sea Islands
Sea Islands
The Sea Islands are a chain of tidal and barrier islands on the Atlantic Ocean coast of the United States. They number over 100, and are located between the mouths of the Santee and St. Johns Rivers along the coast of the U.S...
and the coastal region of the U.S. states of North Carolina, South Carolina
South Carolina Low Country
The Lowcountry is a geographic and cultural region located along South Carolina's coast. The region includes the South Carolina Sea Islands...
, Georgia and northeast Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
.
The Gullah language is based on English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, with strong influences from West
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...
and Central Africa
Central Africa
Central Africa is a core region of the African continent which includes Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda....
n languages such as Mandinka
Mandinka language
The Mandinka language is a Mandé language spoken by millions of Mandinka people in Mali, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea-Bissau and Chad; it is the main language of The Gambia. It belongs to the Manding branch of Mandé, and is thus fairly...
, 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...
, Bambara
Bambara language
Bambara, more correctly known as Bamanankan , its designation in the language itself , is a language spoken in Mali by as many as six million people...
, Fula
Fula language
The Fula or Fulani language is a language of West Africa. It is spoken as a first language by the and related groups from Senegambia and Guinea to Cameroon and Sudan...
, Mende
Mende language
Mende is a major language of Sierra Leone, with some speakers in neighboring Liberia. It is spoken by the Mende people and by other ethnic groups as a regional lingua franca in southern Sierra Leone....
, Vai
Vai language
The Vai language, alternately called Vy or Gallinas, is a Mande language, spoken by roughly 104,000 in Liberia and by smaller populations, some 15,500, in Sierra Leone. It is noteworthy for being one of the few sub-Saharan African languages to have a writing system that is not based on the Latin...
, Akan
Akan language
Akan, also known as Twi and Fante, is an Akan language that is the principal native language of Ghana, spoken over much of the southern half of that country, by about 52% of the population, and to a lesser extent across the border in eastern Côte d'Ivoire...
, Ewe
Ewe language
Ewe is a Niger–Congo language spoken in Ghana, Togo and Benin by approximately six million people. Ewe is part of a cluster of related languages commonly called Gbe, spoken in southeastern Ghana, Togo, and parts of Benin. Other Gbe languages include Fon, Gen, Phla Phera, and Aja...
, Yoruba
Yoruba language
Yorùbá is a Niger–Congo language spoken in West Africa by approximately 20 million speakers. The native tongue of the Yoruba people, it is spoken, among other languages, in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo and in communities in other parts of Africa, Europe and the Americas...
, Igbo
Igbo language
Igbo , or Igbo proper, is a native language of the Igbo people, an ethnic group primarily located in southeastern Nigeria. There are approximately 20 million speakers that are mostly in Nigeria and are primarily of Igbo descent. Igbo is a national language of Nigeria. It is written in the Latin...
, Hausa
Hausa language
Hausa is the Chadic language with the largest number of speakers, spoken as a first language by about 25 million people, and as a second language by about 18 million more, an approximate total of 43 million people...
, Kongo
Kongo language
The Kongo language, or Kikongo, is the Bantu language spoken by the Bakongo and Bandundu people living in the tropical forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo and Angola. It is a tonal language and formed the base for Kituba, a Bantu creole and lingua franca...
, Umbundu
Umbundu
South Mbundu, or Umbundu, is a language spoken by the Southern Mbundu people - now generally referred to by the way they call themselves, Ovimbundu - in the central highlands of Angola. Umbundu is the most widespread Bantu language in Angola. About one third of Angola is represented by Ovimbundu...
and Kimbundu.
Origins
Scholars have proposed two theories about the origins of Gullah;- Many scholars believe that Gullah arose independently in South Carolina and Georgia in the 18th and 19th centuries when African slaves on rice plantations developed their own creole languageCreole languageA creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...
combining features of the English they encountered in America with the West and Central African languages they brought with them on the Middle PassageMiddle PassageThe Middle Passage was the stage of the triangular trade in which millions of people from Africa were shipped to the New World, as part of the Atlantic slave trade...
. According to this view, Gullah is an independent development in North America. - But other scholars maintain that some of the slaves brought to South Carolina and Georgia already knew Guinea Coast Creole EnglishWest African Pidgin EnglishWest African Pidgin English, also called Guinea Coast Creole English, was the lingua franca, or language of commerce, spoken along the West African coast during the period of the Atlantic slave trade...
(also called West African Pidgin English) before they left Africa. Guinea Coast Creole English was spoken along the West African coast during the 18th century as a language of trade between Europeans and Africans and between Africans of different tribes. It was used especially in British coastal slave trading centers such as James IslandJames Island (The Gambia)James Island is an island in the Gambia River, 30 km from the river mouth and near Juffureh in the country of The Gambia. On 6 February 2011 it was renamed Kunta Kinteh Island to give the Island a Gambian name. Fort James is located on the island...
, Bunce IslandBunce IslandBunce Island is the site of an 18th century British slave castle in the Republic of Sierra Leone in West Africa....
, Elmina CastleElmina CastleElmina Castle was erected by Portugal in 1482 as São Jorge da Mina Castle, also known simply as Mina or Feitoria da Mina) in present-day Elmina, Ghana . It was the first trading post built on the Gulf of Guinea, so is the oldest European building in existence below the Sahara...
, Cape Coast CastleCape Coast CastleCape Coast Castle is a fortification in Ghana built by Swedish traders. The first timber construction on the site was erected in 1653 for the Swedish Africa Company and named Carolusborg after King Charles X of Sweden. It was later rebuilt in stone....
and AnomabuAnomabuAnomabu , is a town on the coast of Ghana, Africa.-European colonization:Anomabu became the focus of intense European trade rivalry in the 17th and 18th centuries, partly because of its easy access to a rich hinterland and partly because the local Anomabu were themselves powerful and astute traders...
.
These two theories are not necessarily mutually exclusive. While it is very likely that some of the Gullahs’ ancestors came from Africa with a working knowledge of Guinea Coast Creole English, it is clear that most slaves taken to America did not have prior experience with a creole language in Africa. It is also clear that the Gullah language evolved in unique circumstances in coastal South Carolina and Georgia and acquired its own distinctive form in that new environment.
The vocabulary of Gullah comes primarily from English, but it also has words of African origin. Some of the most common African loanwords are: cootuh ("turtle
Pseudemys
Pseudemys is a genus of large, herbivorous, freshwater turtles of the eastern United States. They are often referred to as cooters, which stems from kuta, the word for turtle in the Bambara and Malinké languages, brought to America by African slaves....
"), oonuh ("you"), nyam ("eat"), buckruh ("white man"), pojo ("heron
Heron
The herons are long-legged freshwater and coastal birds in the family Ardeidae. There are 64 recognised species in this family. Some are called "egrets" or "bitterns" instead of "heron"....
"), swonguh ("proud") and benne ("sesame
Sesame
Sesame is a flowering plant in the genus Sesamum. Numerous wild relatives occur in Africa and a smaller number in India. It is widely naturalized in tropical regions around the world and is cultivated for its edible seeds, which grow in pods....
").
Related languages
Gullah resembles other English-based creole languages spoken in West Africa and the Caribbean Basin. These include the Krio languageKrio language
Sierra Leone Krio is the lingua franca and the de facto national language spoken throughout the West African nation of Sierra Leone. Krio is spoken by 97% of Sierra Leone's population and unites the different ethnic groups in the country, especially in their trade and social interaction with each...
of Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone , officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea to the north and east, Liberia to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west and southwest. Sierra Leone covers a total area of and has an estimated population between 5.4 and 6.4...
, Bahamian Dialect, Jamaican Creole
Jamaican Creole
Jamaican Patois, known locally as Patois or Jamaican, and called Jamaican Creole by linguists, is an English-lexified creole language with West African influences spoken primarily in Jamaica and the Jamaican diaspora. It is not to be confused with Jamaican English nor with the Rastafarian use of...
, Bajan Creole and Belizean Kriol
Belizean Kriol language
Belizean Creole English, known as Kriol by its speakers, is an English-based creole language most closely related to Miskito Coastal Creole, Limón Coastal Creole, Colón Creole, San Andrés and Providencia Creole, Guyanese Creole, Jamaican Patois and English creoles of the Caribbean show similarity...
. It is speculated that these languages use English as a lexifier (or vocabularies derived largely from English) and that their syntax (grammars and sentence structures) are strongly influenced by African languages but research by Salikoko Mufwene
Salikoko Mufwene
Salikoko Mufwene is a linguist born in Mbaya-Lareme in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He is the Frank J. McLoraine Distinguished Service Professor of linguistics at the University of Chicago. He has worked extensively on the development of creole languages, as well as on African American...
and others suggests that non-standard Englishes may have also influenced Gullah's (and other creoles') syntactical features.
Gullah is most closely related to Afro-Seminole Creole
Afro-Seminole Creole
Afro-Seminole Creole is an English-based creole spoken by Black Seminoles in scattered communities in Oklahoma, Texas, and Northern Mexico.It was first identified as a language by Ian Hancock, a linguist at the University of Texas....
, spoken in scattered Black Seminole communities in Oklahoma, Texas, and Northern Mexico. The Black Seminoles' ancestors were Gullahs who escaped from slavery in coastal South Carolina and Georgia in the 18th and 19th centuries and fled into the Florida wilderness. They emigrated from Florida after the Second Seminole War
Second Seminole War
The Second Seminole War, also known as the Florida War, was a conflict from 1835 to 1842 in Florida between various groups of Native Americans collectively known as Seminoles and the United States, part of a series of conflicts called the Seminole Wars...
(1835–42). Their modern descendants in the West speak a conservative form of Gullah resembling the language of 19th-century plantation slaves.
Lorenzo Turner's research
In the 1930s and 1940s an African-American linguist named Lorenzo Dow TurnerLorenzo Dow Turner
Lorenzo Dow Turner was an African-American academic and linguist who did seminal research on the Gullah language of the Low Country of coastal South Carolina and Georgia. His studies included recordings of Gullah speakers in the 1930s...
did a seminal study of the Gullah language based on field research in rural communities in coastal South Carolina and Georgia. Turner found that Gullah is strongly influenced by African languages in its sound system, vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, and semantic system. Turner identified over 300 loanword
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s from various African languages
The Languages of Africa
The Languages of Africa is a 1963 book of essays by Joseph Greenberg, in which he sets forth a genetic classification of African languages that, with some changes, continues to be the most commonly used one today...
in Gullah and almost 4,000 African personal names used by Gullah people. He also found Gullahs living in remote sea-side settlements who could recite songs and story fragments and do simple counting in the Mende
Mende language
Mende is a major language of Sierra Leone, with some speakers in neighboring Liberia. It is spoken by the Mende people and by other ethnic groups as a regional lingua franca in southern Sierra Leone....
, Vai
Vai
Vai has several possible meanings:* Vaï, Moroccan-French Canadian rapper* Vai people** Vai language** Vai syllabary* Vai * Văi, a village in Lupşa Commune, Alba County, Romania* Steve Vai, guitarist* Steve Vai's band Vai - see Steve Vai...
and Fulani languages of West Africa. Turner published his findings in a classic work called Africanisms
Africanisms
Africanisms refers to characteristics of African culture and people that can be traced through societal practices and institutions of the African diaspora....
in the Gullah Dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
(1949). His book, now in its fourth edition, was most recently reprinted with a new introduction in 2002.
Before Lorenzo Turner's work, mainstream scholars viewed Gullah speech as substandard English, a hodgepodge of mispronounced words and corrupted grammar which uneducated black people developed in their efforts to copy the speech of their English, Irish, Scottish and French Huguenot
Huguenot
The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...
slave owners. But Turner's study was so well researched and detailed in its evidence of African influences in Gullah that academics soon reversed course. After Turner's book was published in 1949, scholars began coming to the Gullah region regularly to study African influences in Gullah language and culture.
Morphology
The following sentences illustrate the basic verb tense and aspect system in Gullah:- Uh he'p dem — "I help them/I helped them" (Present/Past Tense)
- Uh bin he'p dem — "I helped them" (past tense) [I've been helping them]
- Uh gwine he'p dem — "I will help them" (future tense) [I'm going to help them]
- Uh done he'p dem — "I have helped them" (perfect tense) [I've done helped them]
- Uh duh he'p dem — "I am helping them" (present continuous) [I'm done helping them]
- Uh binnuh he'p dem — "I was helping them" (past continuous) [I've been helping them]
Syntax
These sentences illustrate 19th-century Gullah speech:- Da' big dog, 'e bite'um — "That big dog, it bit him" (topicalization)
- Duh him cry out so — "It is him cried out that way" (front focusing)
- Uh tell'um say da' dog fuh bite'um — "I told him said that dog would bite him" (dependent clauses with "Say")
- De dog run, gone, bite'um — "The dog ran, went, bit him" (serial verb construction)
- Da' duh big big dog — "That is big big dog" (reduplication)
Gullah storytelling
The Gullah people have a rich storytelling tradition strongly influenced by African oral traditions, but also informed by their historical experience in America. Their stories include animal tricksterTrickster
In mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and conventional behavior. It is suggested by Hansen that the term "Trickster" was probably first used in this...
tales about the antics of "Brer Rabbit"
Br'er Rabbit
Br'er Rabbit is a central figure in the Uncle Remus stories of the Southern United States. He is a trickster character who succeeds by his wits rather than by brawn, tweaking authority figures and bending social mores as he sees fit...
, "Brer Fox" and "Brer Bear"
Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear
Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear are fictional characters from the Uncle Remus folktales adapted and compiled by Joel Chandler Harris....
, "Brer Wolf", etc.; human trickster tales about clever and self-assertive slaves; and morality tales designed to impart moral teaching to children.
Several white American writers collected Gullah stories in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The best collections were made by Charles Colcock Jones, Jr.
Charles Colcock Jones, Jr.
Charles C. Jones Jr. was born October 28, 1831 in Savannah, the son of Charles Colcock Jones, a Presbyterian minister. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University in 1852 then followed with a law degree from Harvard University in 1855. He became mayor of Savannah in 1860....
from Georgia and Albert Henry Stoddard from South Carolina. Jones (a Confederate officer during the Civil War) and Stoddard were both planter-class whites who grew up speaking Gullah with the slaves (and later, freedmen) on their families' plantations. Another collection was made by Abigail Christensen, a Northern woman whose parents came to the Lowcountry after the Civil War to assist the newly freed slaves. Ambrose E. Gonzales
Ambrose E. Gonzales
Ambrose Elliott Gonzales was born on a plantation in Colleton County, South Carolina. Gonzales was the son of Colonel Ambrosio José Gonzales and Harriet Rutledge Elliot. His father was a Colonel in the Confederate Army who played an instrumental role in the defenses of South Carolina during the...
, another writer of South Carolina planter-class background, also wrote original stories in 19th-century Gullah, based on Gullah literary forms. Gonzales' works are well remembered in South Carolina today.
The linguistic accuracy of these writings has been questioned because of the authors' social backgrounds. Nonetheless, these works provide the best available information on the Gullah language as it was spoken in its more conservative form during the 19th century.
Gullah language today
The Gullah language is spoken today by about 250,000 people in coastal South CarolinaSouth Carolina Low Country
The Lowcountry is a geographic and cultural region located along South Carolina's coast. The region includes the South Carolina Sea Islands...
and Georgia. Although some scholars argue that Gullah has changed little since the 19th century and that the majority of speakers have always been bidialectal, it is likely that at least some decreolization
Decreolization
Decreolization is a hypothetical phenomenon whereby over time a creole language reconverges with one of the standard languages from which it originally derived...
has taken place. In other words, some African-influenced grammatical structures that were present a century ago are less prevalent in the language today. Nonetheless, Gullah is still understood as a creole language and is certainly distinct from Standard American English.
For generations, outsiders stigmatized
Social stigma
Social stigma is the severe disapproval of or discontent with a person on the grounds of characteristics that distinguish them from other members of a society.Almost all stigma is based on a person differing from social or cultural norms...
Gullah speakers, regarding their language as a mark of ignorance and low social status. As a result, Gullah people
Gullah
The Gullah are African Americans who live in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and Georgia, which includes both the coastal plain and the Sea Islands....
developed the habit of speaking their language only within the confines of their own homes and local communities, hence the difficulty in enumerating speakers and assessing decreolization. They avoided using it in public situations outside the safety of their home areas and many experienced discrimination even within the Gullah community. Some speculate that the prejudice of outsiders may have helped maintain the language. Others suggest that a kind of valorization or "covert prestige" remained for many community members and that this complex pride has insulated the language from obliteration.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas
Clarence Thomas
Clarence Thomas is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Succeeding Thurgood Marshall, Thomas is the second African American to serve on the Court....
was raised as a Gullah speaker in coastal Georgia. When asked why he has little to say during hearings of the court, he told a high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
student that the ridicule he received for his Gullah speech as a young man caused him to develop the habit of listening rather than speaking in public. Thomas's English-speaking grandfather raised him after the age of six in Savannah.
In recent years educated Gullah people have begun promoting use of Gullah openly as a symbol of cultural pride. In 2005, Gullah community leaders announced the completion of a translation of the New Testament into modern Gullah, a project that took more than 20 years to complete.
Samples
These sentences are examples of how Gullah was spoken in the 19th century:| Uh gwine gone dey tomorruh. | "I will go there tomorrow."[I'm going to go there tomorrow] |
| We blan ketch 'nuf cootuh dey. | "We always catch a lot of turtles there." |
| Dem yent yeddy wuh oonuh say. | "They did not hear what you said." |
| Dem chillun binnuh nyam all we rice. | "Those children were eating all our rice."[Those(Them) children been eating all our rice] |
| "He told him that he had to do it." | |
| Duh him tell we say dem duh faa'muh. | "He's the one who told us that they are farmers." |
| De buckruh dey duh 'ood duh hunt tuckrey. | "The white man is in the woods hunting turkeys." |
| Alltwo dem 'ooman done fuh smaa't. | "Both those women are really smart." |
| Enty duh dem shum dey? | "Aren't they the ones who saw him there?" |
This story, called , was first published in 1888 by story collector Charles Colcock Jones, Jr.:
Translation
Brer Lion was hunting, and he spied Brer Goat lying down on top of a big rock working his mouth and chewing. He crept up to catch him. When he got close to him, he watched him good. Brer Goat kept on chewing. Brer Lion tried to find out what Brer Goat was eating. He didn't see anything near him except the naked rock which he was lying down on. Brer Lion was astonished. He waited for Brer Goat. Brer Goat kept on chewing, and chewing, and chewing. Brer Lion couldn't make the thing out, and he came close, and he said: "Hey! Brer Goat, what are you eating?" Brer Goat was scared when Brer Lion rose up before him, but he kept a bold heart, and he made (his) answer: "I am chewing this rock, and if you don't leave me (alone), when I am done with it I will eat you". This big word saved Brer Goat. A bold man gets out of difficulty where a cowardly man loses his life.Kumbayah
The Gullah phrase "Kumbayah" ("Come By Here") became known throughout the United States and worldwide due to its inclusion in Kumbayah, a song of the same name — though many of those who sing it are unaware of its linguistic antecedents.See also
- African American studiesAfrican American studiesAfrican American studies is a subset of Black studies or Africana studies. It is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to the study of the history, culture, and politics of African Americans...
- African American Vernacular EnglishAfrican American Vernacular EnglishAfrican American Vernacular English —also called African American English; less precisely Black English, Black Vernacular, Black English Vernacular , or Black Vernacular English —is an African American variety of American English...
- EbonicsEbonicsEbonics is a term that was originally intended to refer to the language of all people descended from enslaved Africans, particularly in West Africa, the Caribbean, and North America...
- Gullah Gullah IslandGullah Gullah IslandGullah Gullah Island is an American children's television series starring Ron Daise and his wife Natalie Daise. It was the first show designed for preschoolers to feature a Gullah family.-Background:...
Further reading
- Carawan, Guy and Candie (1989) "Ain't You Got a Right to the Tree of Life: The People of Johns Island, South Carolina, their Faces, their Words, and their Songs," Athens: University of Georgia Press.
- Conroy, Pat (1972) "The Water Is Wide".
- Geraty, Virginia Mixon (1997) "Gulluh fuh Oonuh: A Guide to the Gullah Language," Orangeburg, SC: Sandlapper Publishing Company.
- Goodwine, Marquetta L., and Clarity Press (Atlanta Ga.). Gullah Project. 1998. The legacy of Ibo landing: Gullah roots of African American culture. Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press.
- Jones-Jackson, Patricia (1987) "When Roots Die: Endangered Traditions on the Sea Islands," Athens: University of Georgia Press.
- Joyner, Charles (1984) "Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community," Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
- Mille, Katherine and Michael Montgomery (2002) Introduction to "Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect" by Lorenzo Dow Turner, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
- Montgomery, Michael (ed.) (1994) "The Crucible of Carolina: Essays in the Development of Gullah Language and Culture," Athens: University of Georgia Press.
- Mufwene, Salikoko (1991). "Some reasons why Gullah is not dying yet". English World-Wide 12: 215–243.
- Mufwene, Salikoko (1997). "The ecology of Gullah's survival". American Speech 72: 69–83. doi:10.2307/455608.
- Opala, Joseph A. 2000. The Gullah: rice, slavery and the Sierra Leone-American connection. 4th ed. [Freetown, Sierra Leone: USIS.
- Turner, Lorenzo Dow (2002) "Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect," Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
- Wood, Peter (1974) "Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion," New York: Knopf.
Books in the Gullah language
- Christensen, AbigailAbigail Mandana Holmes ChristensenAbigail Mandana Holmes Christensen was an American collector of folklore.Abigail Christensen was born in Massachusetts to abolitionist parents, her family later moved to South Carolina...
1892 (1969) "Afro-American Folk Lore Told Round Cabin Fires on the Sea Islands of South Carolina," New York: Negro Universities Press. - Gonzales, Ambrose Elliott (1969) "With Aesop Along the Black Border," New York: Negro Universities Press.
- Gonzales, Ambrose Elliott (1998) "The Black Border: Gullah Stories of the Carolina Coast," Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company.
- Jones, Charles Colcock (2000) "Gullah Folktales from the Georgia Coast," Athens: University of Georgia Press.
- Parsons, Elsie ClewsElsie Clews ParsonsElsie Worthington Clews Parsons was an American anthropologist, sociologist, folklorist, and feminist who studied Native American tribes—such as the Tewa and Hopi—in Arizona, New Mexico, and Mexico. She helped found The New School...
(1923) "Folk-Lore of the Sea Islands, South Carolina," New York: American Folk-Lore Society. - Sea Island Translation Team (2005) "De Nyew Testament (The New Testament in Gullah)," New York: American Bible Society.
- Stoddard, Albert Henry (1995) "Gullah Animal Tales from Daufuskie Island, South Carolina," Hilton Head Island, SC: Push Button Publishing Company.
- Brown, Alphonso (2008) "A Gullah Guide to Charleston," The History Press.
- Chandler Harris, JoelJoel Chandler HarrisJoel Chandler Harris was an American journalist, fiction writer, and folklorist best known for his collection of Uncle Remus stories. Harris was born in Eatonton, Georgia, where he served as an apprentice on a plantation during his teenage years...
(1879) "The Story of Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Fox as Told by Uncle RemusUncle RemusUncle Remus is a fictional character, the title character and fictional narrator of a collection of African American folktales adapted and compiled by Joel Chandler Harris, published in book form in 1881...
" Atlanta Constitution
Films in/about the Gullah language
- "Daughters of the Dust"
- http://newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0053 "The language you cry in"
Toepke, Alvaro, Angel Serrano, and California Newsreel (Firm). 1998. The language you cry in. San Francisco, CA: California Newsreel. videorecording.
- ConrackConrackConrack can refer to:* Conrack, the 1974 film starring Jon Voight....
"Conrack (1974; Jon Voight, Paul Winfield, Hume Cronyn, et al.)"]
Listen to the Gullah language
- Gullah Words
- Modern Gullah Story
- Old Recordings, Library of Congress
- Gullah New Testament Reading
- Modern Gullah
- Modern Gullah Storyteller (video)
External links
- Gullah Language of the Sea Islands
- Gullah Language Thrives
- Gullah Language and its Origins
- Bible Translation Project Website
- De Gullah Nyew Testament
- Gullah and Sierra Leone Krio
- Story in Gullah and Krio
- Gullah Song Traced to West Africa
- Gullah phrases
- Gullah dictionary
- Text of "Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect"