Gullah language
Encyclopedia : G : GU : GUL : Gullah language
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Gullah is based on English, with strong influences from West and Central African languages such as Mandinka, Wolof, Fula, Mende, Vai, Akan, Kikongo, and Kimbundu.
History
Like other Atlantic creoles, Gullah derives from the Guinea Coast Creole English (the West African Pidgin English) that developed along the West African coast in the 1600s and 1700s as a way for Africans to communicate with Europeans and with members of other African tribes with whom they traded. Gullah strongly resembles the Krio language of Sierra Leone, a major West African English-based creole, Belizean Creole, Guyanese Creole, and Jamaican Creole, . Some African-derived words found commonly in Gullah are: cootuh ("turtle"), oonuh ("you"), nyam ("eat"), buckruh ("white man"), pojo ("heron"), swonguh ("proud"), benne ("sesame"), and biddy ("baby chick").In the 1930s and 1940s an African American linguist named Lorenzo Dow Turner did a seminal study of the Gullah language. 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 loanwords from various African languages in Gullah and over 4,000 African personal names used by Gullah people. Turner also found Gullahs living in remote sea-side settlements who could recite songs and story fragments and do simple counting in African languages.
The following sentences are examples of the Gullah language as it was spoken in the 19th century:
- Uh gwine gone dey tomorruh. "I will go there tomorrow."
- We blan ketch 'nuf cootuh dey. "We always catch a lot of turtles there."
- Dem ent yeddy wuh oonuh say. "They did not hear what you said."
- Dem chillum binuh nyam all we rice. "Those children were eating all our rice."
' E tell'um say 'e haffuh do'um. "He told him that he had to do it."- Duh him tell we say dem alltwo duh faa'muh. "He's the one who told us that they are both farmers."
- Dem Buckruh dey duh 'ood duh hunt tuckrey. "Those white men are in the woods hunting turkeys."
- Alltwo dem 'ooman done fuh smaa't. "Both of those women are really smart."
- Enty duh dem shum dey? "Aren't they the ones who saw him there?"
- Dem dey dey duh wait fuh we. "They are there waiting for us."
References
- Turner, Lorenzo Dow. Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect. ISBN 1-57003-452-4.
- The Language You Cry In (film, 1998).
External links
Listening
- ["Finding Priscilla's Children"] from The World radio program, December 28, 2005
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