The Gullah Language
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The Gullah language is what linguists call an English-based creole language. Creoles arise in the context of trade, colonialism, and slavery when people of diverse backgrounds are thrown together and must forge a common means of communication. According to one view, creole languages are essentially hybrids that blend linguistic influences from a variety of different sources. In the case of Gullah, the vocabulary is largely from the English "target language," the speech of the socially and economically dominant group; but the African "substrate languages" have altered the pronunciation of almost all the English words, influenced the grammar and sentence structure, and provided a sizable minority of the vocabulary. Many early scholars made the mistake of viewing the Gullah language as "broken English," because they failed to recognize the strong underlying influence of African languages. But linguists today view Gullah, and other creoles, as full and complete languages with their own systematic grammatical structures. From "The Gullah Language", Joseph Opala, Yale University
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Lorenzo Dow Turner
Lorenzo Dow Turner (1890 –1972) was an African American academic and linguist who conducted seminal research on the Gullah language of coastal South Carolina and Georgia. He earned a master's degree from Harvard and a Ph.D. from the Univ. of Chicago. He taught at Howard University (1917-1928) and Fisk University (1929 – 1946) and traveled West Africa, identifying over 300 (Mende, Vai, Fulani) Gullah loanwords and 4,000 personal names. He published his findings in his book “Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect (1949).
Examples of the vocabulary of Gullah comes primarily from English, but it also has words of African origin. Some common African loanwords are: cootuh ("turtle"), oonuh ("you plural]"), nyam ("eat"), buckruh ("white man"), pojo ("heron"), swonguh ("proud") and benne ("sesame").
Examples of the vocabulary of Gullah comes primarily from English, but it also has words of African origin. Some common African loanwords are: cootuh ("turtle"), oonuh ("you plural]"), nyam ("eat"), buckruh ("white man"), pojo ("heron"), swonguh ("proud") and benne ("sesame").
The Story of English - Origins of African American English
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A 1986 PBS documentary detailing the development of the English language. Initially arising as a mix of Gaelic, Norse and Saxon, the language gradually developed its own distinctive characteristics. As time passed and native speakers began to spread throughout the world, different regions began to form their own dialects. This episode features Gullah speakers including Marquetta Goodwine (Queen Quet), of St. Helena Island.
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