Gullah (also called Geechee or Sea Island Creole)
One of the legacies of the plantation system, which still exists today, manifests itself in the utterances of a group of African Americans who reside primarily in the coastal areas of South Carolina, Georgia, and Northeast Florida. These individuals are known as the Gullah or Geechee people who are direct descendants of slaves who were brought to these regions from Africa. The Gullah language which they speak is also known as Geechee or Sea Island Creole and is described by Thomas B. Klein (2013) in “The Survey of Pidgin and Creole Language” as being “the only English-lexified creole language spoken indigenously in the continental United States.” The fact that Gullah is a creole language makes it a direct result of the plantation system. It developed on the plantations among slaves in the 18th Century in South Carolina, Georgia, and Northeast Florida as a result of the contact between the English that their colonizers spoke to and around them (and forced them to learn), and the African languages they brought with them when they were forcibly plucked from their homeland (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2018).
History of Gullah
The history of Gullah is very similar to that of many creole languages that currently exist in post-colonial regions where there was contact between an imperialist culture and the culture of enslaved Africans. Historians have postulated that the slaves who were taken to work in the coastal areas on the rice plantations in South Carolina, Georgia, and Northeast Florida in the 18th Century were those taken as captives from the Caribbean, and from the Mandingo, Bamana, Wolof, Fula, Temne, Mende, Vai, Akan, Ewe, Makongo, and Kimbundu tribes in Africa, (“Digital Kenyon,” 2018). Since these individuals were from different tribes and spoke various African languages, it became difficult for them to communicate with each other in a common African language, and so, as a necessity for effective communication to take place between them, “they appropriated English as a common language, and it was in turn modified by the African languages they originally spoke” (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2018). Hence, Gullah developed as a pidgin and later became a creole when the descendants of these slaves acquired and became native speakers of this language.
In the 1930s, Lorenzo Dow Turner, who was an African American linguist educated at Howard and Harvard Universities, became the first individual to conduct research and recordings of Sea Island dialects. Turner particularly focused his research on Gullah and thus became the first individual to conduct scholarly research of the history and structure of this language that the wider American society considered to be merely broken English. According to the article “Lorenzo Dow Turner: Connecting Communities Through Language” by Alcione M. Amos (2011), Turner immersed himself into the Gullah culture and conducted his interview of Gullah speakers in Charleston, Brunswick, Beaufort and Savannah using a recording device weighing about a hundred pounds. These recordings, along with his later visits to West Africa and research into the languages there, enabled him to debunk the old theories that many had of Gullah as being a poorly spoken form of English. Turner discovered that some of “the grammatical constructions and [many] words of Gullah had nothing to do with English” (Amos, 2011, p. 10) but rather were African in origin. A British historian named P.E.H. Hair later published a review of Turner’s research on Gullah in which he noted that “Sierra Leone languages have made a ‘major contribution’ to the development of the Gullah Language” (Opala, 2018). He supported this view by pointing out that all the African texts known to have been preserved by the Gullah people were in languages spoken in Sierra Leone.
The name Gullah is described in “The Survey of Pidgin and Creole languages” as possibly being an “adaptation of Angola [which] is joined by another which traces it to the Gola people of Sierra Leone” (Klein, 2013). This source also states that “other linguistic groups by this name are also known in the modern West African states of Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, Guinea, and Guinea-Bissau. Furthermore, there are Gala and Ngala people in Nigeria” (Klein, 2013). The alternative name Geechee which is used to refer to the Gullah people living in Georgia is believed to be a derivative from the Kisi people who can be found in Sierra Leone, and other groups by this name are also found in Liberia. Another theory claims that the name comes from the Ogeechee River in Georgia.
Current status of Gullah
Gullah is currently spoken in the Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia, North Carolina, the coastal region of Jacksonville, North Carolina, the coastal lowlands to Jacksonville, South Carolina, and in diasporic communities in Florida, Detroit Michigan, and New York City (Simons, 2017). In general, the language currently exists in the Southeastern region of the United States. A 2010 US Census revealed that there are about 350 monolingual Gullah speakers, and about 10,000 bilingual speakers of the language (Simons, 2017). Gullah is not spoken at all levels of society and is considered as the variant of English which has “diverted the most from educated white middle-class English varieties” (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2018). However, the preservation of cultural identity has played an important role in the preservation of Gullah. The few Gullahs who migrate to other parts of America for school or work for example, to escape poverty, return home not speaking the same way; nevertheless, a significant number of these individuals learn to code-switch successfully and thereby endeavor to maintain their cultural solidarity with their communities. In other words, “if they spoke Gullah before they left coastal South Carolina or Georgia, people who return, often after long periods of residence in New York…typically revert to this vernacular. For them it is one of the ways to identify themselves with home” (Mufwene, 1997, p.72).
As with many other creole languages, there is no standardized writing system for Gullah as it is predominantly a spoken language kept in the confines of the Gullah community because of the negative stigma the wider society has attached to it as being “bad English.” Mufwene (1997) reinforces this idea when he states that “Gullah speakers stop speaking their vernacular away from home especially when they interact with people of different backgrounds” (p. 73) because of this negative stigma. However, the Gullah people have produced media to educate others about the language and their culture in both Gullah and English; these include blogs, webpages such as gullah.net on the educational website knowitall.org, the website gullahgeecheenation.com, and a newsletter named “De Conch.” There are also songs in Gullah and videos on YouTube featuring Gullah Story tellers such as Carolyn “Jabulile” White who tells traditional Gullah stories in the language. In 2005, after 26 years, the translation of the New Testament of the King James version of the Bible into Gullah was completed. According to Klein (2013), this translation called “De Nyew Testament [was done] by a native speaker panel in South Carolina…and is the first book in Gullah by native speakers for native speakers.” Klein further speculates the linguistic prestige associated with this bible might facilitate a recreolization of Gullah speech.
Features that set Gullah apart from other English-lexified creoles
Gullah is said to be similar to Bahamas Creole English and has ninety percent lexical similarity with Afro-Seminole (Simons, 2017); however, there are a few linguistic features that set this language apart from similar ones. According to “Encyclopedia Britannica” (2018),
Gullah tense and aspect are marked by null or free morphemes, a form of speech that [very] rarely occurs in other English [-lexified Creoles] and usually only in archaic or marginal nonstandard dialects spoken by rural whites. [For example,] the verb go pronounced as /gə/, is typically used to mark the future tense, as in he go see um (he’ll see him/her/it); the locative verb duh /də/ marks the progressive aspect, as in Uh ain duh fun (I’m not kidding); duhz/does /dəz/ is used to express habits, as in How you duhz cook this? (How do you (usually) cook this?); and the verb done (finish) combines with a verb stem to mark the perfect aspect rather emphatically, as in Sara done tell me (Sara (has) told me).
A linguist named Ian Hancock also found that Gullah possesses features of vocabulary, grammar and phonology that are found in Krio spoken in Sierra Leone but are not found in any other English-lexified creole similar to Gullah. These include among others, Krio expressions such as bohboh (boy), titi (girl), enti (not so?), and an auxiliary verb, blant, which appears in Gullah as buhbuh, tittuh, enty, and blang (Opala, 2018). This discovery further reinforces that of Turner’s research which revealed the vast extent to which Sierra Leone languages contributed to the development of Gullah.
Perceived legitimacy of Gullah
Since Gullah is predominantly seen as being an oral language, this causes many to question its legitimacy. It has been frequently dismissed as being “broken English” and the fact that its speakers who bear its name are a part of the minority group in America further causes the wider society to view it as being “just another unintelligible creole.” According to the article “Gullah Grammar Sketch” by David B. Frank (2015), “no proper language survey has been conducted [recently] to count the speakers of Gullah, and it is likely that none ever will get done” (p. 2); this suggests the little extent to which the wider society views Gullah unlike other languages such as English and Spanish. Undoubtedly, many who are Gullah descendants and those who see the value of cultural preservation endeavor to legitimize and preserve the Gullah language through various forms of media, and through academic research. On the other hand, others merely see it as a language of entertainment to be used only within the Gullah community or for storytelling. Based on my reading of the comments on Carolyn “Jubilile” White’s Gullah story telling in the video entitled “Wikitongues: Carolyn speaking Gullah and English” on YouTube, hearing the language seems to promote cultural pride for some individuals; for example, one individual wrote, “I’m proud to be Charleston Born and Bred; beautiful message she spoke” (Bridget King, 2017); and another wrote, “I’m from Awendaw, which is considered Charleston, SC. I understood everything, this is how my family talks when were all get together. Hearing this warmed my heart” (Allyson Snipe, 2017). On the other hand, some of the comments on the YouTube video entitled “A story told in traditional Gullah Language at African American Heritage Day” suggests that others have a negative attitude towards the language (and its speakers), for example: “I see being loud and obnoxious has no bounds with these people, no matter how ‘different’ they are” (Sbep125, 2016), and “sounds like gibberish” (Rusty Shackleford, 2017).
Conclusion
Although it is similar in many ways to other English-lexified creoles of other post-colonial regions, the Gullah language is also different to a certain extent because it is the only English-lexified creole spoken indigenously in the United States, and it possesses unique features of vocabulary, grammar and phonology. Lorenzo Turner’s interviews of the Gullah people in the 1930s, his recordings of those interviews, and his overall research of the language helped to inform people that Gullah was not merely “broken English” but rather an intelligible language containing not just features from English but many words that were African in origin. Today, Gullah is predominantly spoken in small communities within the Southeastern region of the United States with many of its speakers code-switching upon returning to those communities. The media that exist in the language enables the Gullah people to promote the legitimacy of Gullah and their culture, but since it is considered as an oral language and the fact that it is a creole, many individuals from the wider society still see it as merely “bad English” or “gibberish.” The negative stereotyping of the language by many, the minority status that the Gullah people have in the US, and the fact that Gullah has no standardized writing system, could negatively impact how it is received and used by future generations. Therefore, there is a possibility that Gullah might remain as it currently is for many years to come.
Works Cited
Amos, A. M. (2011). Lorenzo Dow Turner: Connecting Communities Through Language. The Black Scholar, 41(1), 4-15.
Digital Kenyon: Research, Scholarship, and Creative Exchange. (n.d.). Retrieved February 11,2018, from http://digital.kenyon.edu/gullah/
Frank, D. B. (2015, September 25). Gullah Grammar Sketch – dbfrank.net. Retrieved February11, 2018, from http://www.bing.comGullah. (2018). In Encyclopædia Britannica.
Gullah. (2018). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from http://academic.eb.com.york.ezproxy.cuny.edu/levels/collegiate/article/Gullah/38490
Klein, T. B. (2013). Gullah. In: Michaelis, Susanne Maria & Maurer, Philippe & Haspelmath,Martin & Huber, Magnus (eds.) The survey of pidgin and creole languages. Volume 1:English-based and Dutch-based Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mufwene, S. S. (1997). The Ecology of Gullahs Survival. American Speech, 72(1), 69-83.
Opala, J. A. (n.d.). The Gullah: Rice, Slavery, and the Sierra Leone-American Connection.Retrieved February 10, 2018, from https://glc.yale.edu/gullah-rice-slavery-and-sierra-leone-american-connection
PHFMedia. (2013, February 14). A Story told in the Traditional Gullah Language at African American Heritage Day. Retrieved February 12, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijl7Sg3ZAd0
Simons, Gary F. and Charles D. Fennig (eds.). 2017. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Twentieth edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com.
Wikitongues. (2013, August 04). WIKITONGUES: Carolyn speaking Gullah and English. Retrieved February 15, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCd5W4gwJsI
