The Gullah Language
March 26, 2009 · Print This Article
Part of our country’s growing trend toward ethnic self-awareness has been a renewed interest in Gullah, the colorful language and accompanying lifestyle that once flourished on the South Carolina sea islands from Georgetown to Daufuskie.
Researchers reported that as late as 1979, 100,000 South Carolinians spoke Gullah. Current estimates count 7,000 to 10,000 people speaking Gullah at home. Without intervention, the Gullah language will soon live only in scholarly textbooks and on fragile academic recordings.
The origins of Gullah date back to a sad chapter in America’s past. When slave traders sailed to West Africa and stuffed their ships full of men, women and children to be sold as slaves to Southern planters, Gullah was conceived. As that black culture meshed with the white, Gullah was born. A thick, lilting mix of African and English dialects, it started as a makeshift second language used among the sea island slaves, and it slowly evolved into the unwritten native tongue of their descendants.
Oddly, slavery and the antebellum South fed energy to the language. Gullah served a very practical transitional purpose, and its use and culture actually developed during those years. After the Civil War, however, the separation between the black and white cultures became highly exaggerated for nearly a century and a half. Cut off from the cultural homogenization that occurred everywhere else in America, life along the sea islands changed very little. Sea islanders still fished the coastline, shrimped the marsh, hunted for game in the woods, and spoke their native tongue unashamedly.
Gullah stubbornly survived in this splendid isolation, until the world rediscovered the islands and invested millions of dollars to develop them as resorts. Suddenly, bridges were built that introduced paved roads, indoor plumbing, better education, and access to higher paying mainland jobs. Gullah became thought of as “bad English”. Soon it was something to be ashamed of or denied. Then television, the greatest homogenizing influence of all, came along and nearly snuffed the language out altogether.
Finding true Gullah today is like finding gold. Its rare, and its kept hidden from “outsiders”. Still, there are a few islanders determined to keep it alive. There still are those who knit their own fishing nets, who still cook the Gullah recipes and serve their families whole meals fresh from the sea. Thankfully, there are those who take what’s left of the sweetgrass from the riverbanks and fashion baskets of great skill and beauty – just like their ancestors did back in Sierra Leone.
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Bin Yah: There’s No Place Like Home is a documentary for sale on this website: presented by Justin Nathanson and The ChasDOC Film Society, the film explores the potential loss of important historic African American communities in Mt. Pleasant, S.C due to growth and development. Through the testimonies of the residents themselves, the film explores the culture, the history, the importance of land and the concept of home, giving a voice to those who seldom have had a chance to be heard.
A proposed highway extension threatens to bisect these close-knit neighborhoods of cousins and kinfolk, established by freed slaves and home to generations of their families for hundreds of years. Many residents are artisans and craftspeople, practicing traditional skills including sweetgrass basketmaking, brought over from West Africa and handed down from mothers and fathers to sons and daughters. Today, Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina is the primary place in the U.S. where this grass is harvested and “sewn” into this particular type of basket.
Bin Yah will attempt to preserve – at least on film – the memories of the special places that may be lost forever as the struggle between the real “bin yahs” and the “come yahs” escalates.
I am a Columbia, SC native and I love this site.
I am currently a student at the University of South Carolina and majoring in Anthropology and Media Arts with a focus on Visual Anthropology.
I have often thought about creating a documentary on the Gullah people and their language.
I hope and pray that this culture and this language never die out, and I believe that documentaries such as this one help preserve such rich and important parts of heritage.
Thank you.
Robert Rozier
opngate@gmail.com
ROZIERR@mailbox.sc.edu
I am glad to see hopefully a growing interest in the Geeche People and the Gullah language. Thank you for making this site so people friendly. Can someone email me about the origin of the Geechee name as does it relate to a place in Africa?
Does anyone know if the people originated from Haiti? Thank you, Alice McCann
P.S. Does anyone know if there are Sabbath keepers who know the name Yah on the island?
Grandaughter is doing a state fair report for her school on So. Carolina and her main focus in on Gullahs. We have tried to find info in TN or some music but to no avail. I love this sight
Hi, i am doing some research on the Gullah language- I am wondering if you could direct me to some current info or stats as to how many people still speak the Language.
thank you.
I am in the process of writing a short story in which the mother of protagonist speaks Gullah and the father is Trinidadian…I am born and raised in Harlem, but I have family from Savannah Georgia. I still have my work cut out for me and would just love to be directed to some sites that may give me some audio on the Gullah language.
Thank you in advance
Monique
For the person making the previous comment, here is a link to a source of Gullah music:
http://www.amazon.com/Georgia-Island-Singers-Presents-Gullah-Geechee/dp/B000QAUOC8
The Gullah language is not lost. In Turks and Caicos our local dialect sounds very similar to the dialect you mention above. In fact it is mentioned in our history that many loyalists left the carolinas and moved to the Turks and Caicos during the Aerican Revolution. Perhaps it would be helpful for you to begin researching our dialect for more cues and connection to this colorful dialect.
Karen, I think you are correct – I moved to Charleston from Brooklyn, NY 5 years ago, and when I first heard Gullah it felt extremely familiar….there is a tremendous Caribbean community in Brooklyn and I had been hearing similar dialects my entire life. This was one of the things that peaked my interest in doing this film, and in this culture.
I think what most people who study language agree with is that there was (and is) in fact a true Gullah language that in which spawned a hundred different other dialects, and that the original, through time, can slowly dissipate as people dont need it, dont speak it, and dont hand it down. There are a myriad of reasons why – including other cultures who made them feel embarrassed. I truly think that time is just about behind us now – and the efforts now are in this restoring of Gullah pride which is very evident, living in Charleston, SC. Fortunately, and this I see just in the past 15 – 20 years, The Gullah language has been shared widely once again – spawned by earlier events like the Civil Rights movement but later with growth and development, the internet, PBS television, restored pride, and the official work from great organizations like the UN, the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, The Gullah Geechee Nation and Queen Quet, The Avery Research Center, The Penn Center, The Sweetgrass Cultural Arts Festival, sites that host and archive Gullah Videos, and a host of others. I am so pleased that my little documentary film “Bin Yah” is also a small part of this wider dialogue. We have Gullah spoken in “Bin Yah” by a few people, including an original poem, that was written by the storyteller and poet Fouche Sheppard. These are great ways to hear and share the language.
-Justin Nathanson – Director, “Bin Yah: There’s No Place Like Home” email: justin @ the cut company dot com
Please give some examples of the Gullah-Geechee language including if possible some grammatical rules so that I can see where the structure as well as the vocabulary differs from Standard English.
I am quite fascinated by the survival of this group, and would love to learn more.
tThe gullahs have shown a test of courage and resistance. Long live the Gullah/ geechee