Gullah

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Gullah

(gŭl`ə), a creole languagecreole language
, any language that began as a pidgin but was later adopted as the mother tongue by a people in place of the original mother tongue or tongues. Examples are the Gullah of South Carolina and Georgia (based on English), the creole of Haiti (based on French), and
..... Click the link for more information.  formerly spoken by the Gullah, an African-American community of the Sea IslandsSea Islands,
chain of more than 100 low islands off the Atlantic coast of S.C., Ga., and N Fla., extending from the Santee River to the St. Johns River. The ocean side of the islands is generally sandy; the side facing the mainland is marshy.
..... Click the link for more information.  and the Middle Atlantic coast of the United States. The word is probably a corruption of the African Gola or Gora, names of African tribes living in Liberia, but it may also be derived from Angola, whence many of the Gullahs' ancestors came. The Gullah dialect, spoken now by only a few hundred people, is a mixture of 17th- and 18th-century English and of a number of West African languages (among them Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba). The African influence on Gullah can be seen in the phonology, vocabulary, and grammar. Some African words in Gullah have entered American English, including goober ("peanut"), gumbo ("okra"), and voodoo ("witchcraft"). Du Bose Heyward's novel Porgy (1925), upon which Gershwin's opera is based, was written in the Gullah dialect.

Bibliography

See M. Crum, Gullah (1940); L. D. Turner, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect (1973).

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References in periodicals archive ?
Slovenly and careless of speech, these Gullahs seized upon the peasant English used by some of the early colonists and by the white servants of the wealthier colonists, wrapped their clumsy tongues about it as well as they could, and, enriched with certain expressive African words, it issued through their flat noses and thick lips as so workable a form of speech that it was gradually adopted by the other slaves and became in time the accepted Negro speech of the lower districts of South Carolina and Georgia.
A Peculiar People" Slave Religion and Community-Culture Among the Gullahs.
Mother tongues and captive identities: celebrating and "disappearing" the Gullah/Geechee coast
After years of ignoring the Gullahs, it seemed the American mainstream was fascinated with my roots.
In Dr. Turner's footprints
The Gullahs have made several visits to Bunce; prominent among them was the "homecoming" of Maty Moran and her family in 1997.
Bunce Island 'the warehouse of humanity'
One of the Gullah settlements includes Hilton Head Island which has now become a holiday resort and golf mecca - there are 25 courses to choose from.
It's Southern Fried Kickin' CHILL IN CHARMING CHARLESTON holiday hotspots
The Gullahs, a term used to refer both to the language and culture of the group of (former) African slaves who lived along the Carolina and Georgia coasts, remained a relatively homogenous group well into the twentieth century, largely escaping the culturally deracinating effects of dispersion among Americans of African descent.
The rhetoric of mobility, the politics of consciousness: Julia Mood Peterkin and the case of a white black writer
Traditional Gullahs (1st Circle): Traditional Gullahs are the modern descendants of the historic Gullah people who have remained in the low country region to the present day and continue with their traditional Gullah language and culture to one extent or another.
Gullah Geechee culture: respected, understood and striving: sixty years after Lorenzo Dow Turner's masterpiece, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect
19) This variety of Black English may be compared to what linguists refer to as "decreolized Gullah," the remnant of a once viable means of communication among black slave populations of predominant Southern provenance.
Native identity and alienation in Richard Wright's Native Son and Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart: a cross-cultural analysis
Slovenly and careless of speech, these Gullahs seized upon the peasant English used by some of the early settlers and by the white servants of the wealthier colonists, wrapped their clumsy tongues about it as well as they could, and, enriched with certain expressive African words, it issued through their flat noses and thick lips as so workable a form of speech that it was gradually adopted by the other slaves and became in time the accepted Negro speech of the lower districts of South Carolina and Georgia.
Repositioning: center and margin in Julie Dash's 'Daughters of the Dust.'
Deeply wooded areas are thought by the Gullahs to be sacred because the spirits of the ancestors reside there (Jones-Jackson 27).
Recovering the conjure woman: texts and contexts in Gloria Naylor's 'Mama Day.' (Black Women's Culture Issue)
Hopefully, for teachers who are just beginning their careers in areas of the United States where different languages are spoken and even written, a greater understanding of the Gullah language will be enhanced with the Gullah 220.
Gullah: a study of language
Yet their songs do not indicate that Gullah thought of death with fear, foreboding, or morbidity" (82).
Inscriptions in the dust: A Gathering of Old Men and Beloved as ancestral requiems

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