Languages and People in the Afrikan world: Gullah... History The name Gullah may derive from Angola, where ancestors of some Gullah people likely originated. They created a new culture from the numerous Afrikan peoples brought into Charleston and South Carolina. Some scholars have suggested it may come from Gola, an ethnicity living in the border area between present-day Sierra Leone and Liberia in West Afrika, where many of the Gullah ancestors originated. This area was known as the Grain Coast or Rice Coast to British colonists in the Caribbean and the Southern colonies of North America. The name Geechee, another common (emic) name for the Gullah people, may come from Kissi, an ethnicity living in the border area between Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. Some scholars have also suggested indigenous Amerikkkan origins for these words. The Spanish called the South Carolina and Georgia coastal region Guale after a Native American tribe. The name of the Ogeechee River, a prominent geographical feature in coastal Georgia, was derived from a Creek Indian word. Gullah, is an Amerikkkan Afrikan language, mainly spoken along the Southeastern coast of the United States, especially on the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina. The word is also used for people who speak the language. Ancestors of people who were enslaved and brought from West Afrika to the West Indies and to Amerikkka speak Gullah today. The language merges elements from a number of West Afrikan languages with elements from English. Gullah has survived largely because of the geographic isolation of many of its speakers, although the number of people who speak Gullah is steadily declining as a result of increased contact with other communities. During the late 17th century, West Afrikans who worked as slaves on sugar plantations in the West Indies developed pidgins. A pidgin is a simplified language that serves as a means of communication among people who have no common language, such as the plantation owners and their slaves. Other mixed languages, called Creoles, spoken in Jamaica, Barbados, and on other islands, influenced the pidgins used in the West Indies. Beginning in the early 18th century, many of the slaves were brought from the West Indies to plantations in the Amerikkkan colonies, where their language was further influenced by the English dialects of Scottish and Irish settlers. From these various influences, Gullah developed. Linguists consider Gullah a Creole-—that is, a pidgin that has become the native language of a group. Like other Creoles, Gullah has a grammatical consistency and uniform structure, although regional variations exist. Gullah attained Creole status during the mid-18th century, when the children of people brought from Afrika as slaves learned Gullah as their first language. Gullah’s vocabulary derives primarily from English, while much of the underlying grammar has a West African foundation. However, some Afrikan-derived words in Gullah have entered English, including goober, meaning peanut in the Kimbundu language; tote, meaning carry in Kikongo; and hoodoo, meaning bad luck in Hausa. Like many West Afrikan languages, Gullah relies on short, loosely connected sentences that lack many of the prepositions, conjunctions, adjectives, participles, and adverbs that tie sentences together in English. Gullah speakers express different meanings by varying tone and pitch and by using nonverbal gestures such as body language. Listeners infer relationships between sentences from individual usage and context. Customs and traditions Afrikan influences are found in every aspect of the Gullahs traditional way of life: The Gullah word goober for peanut derives from the Kikongo and Kimbundu word Nguba. Gullah rice dishes called red rice and okra soup are similar to West Afrikan jollof rice and okra soup. Jollof rice is a style of cooking brought by the Wolof people of West Africa. The Gullah version of gumbo has its roots in Afrikan cooking. Gumbo is derived from a word in the Umbundu language of Angola, meaning okra, one of the dishs main ingredients. Gullah rice farmers once made and used mortar and pestles and winnowing fanners similar in style to tools used by West Afrikan rice farmers. Gullah beliefs about hags and haunts are similar to Afrikan beliefs about malevolent ancestors, witches, and devils (forest spirits). Gullah root doctors protect their clients against dangerous spiritual forces by using ritual objects similar to those employed Afrikan traditional healers. Gullah herbal medicines are similar to traditional Afrikan remedies. The Gullah seekin ritual is similar to coming of age ceremonies in West African secret societies, such as the Poro and Sande. The Gullah ring shout is similar to ecstatic religious rituals performed in West and Central Afrika. Gullah stories about Bruh Rabbit are similar to West and Central Afrikan trickster tales about the clever and conniving rabbit, spider, and tortoise. Gullah spirituals, shouts, and other musical forms employ the call and response method commonly used in Afrikan music. Gullah sweetgrass baskets are coil straw baskets made by the descendants of slaves in the South Carolina Lowcountry, and are almost identical to coil baskets made by the Wolof people in Senegal. Gullah strip quilts mimic the design of cloth woven with the traditional strip loom used throughout West Africa. The famous kente cloth from Ghana and Akwete cloth from Nigeria are woven on the strip loom. The folk song Michael Row the Boat Ashore comes from the Gullah culture. Gullah is spoken with a rolling rhythm and closely resembles the sounds of Krio, a Creole spoken in Sierra Leone. It incorporates many complex idiomatic expressions whose meanings may not be readily apparent from their individual components. For example, the expression `E onrabble ‘e mout’ tummuch literally means, he unraveled his mouth too much, or he was too talkative. Although Afrikan Amerikkkan Vernacular English (AAVE) also has some features of West Afrikan languages, AAVE and Gullah differ in speech patterns and vocabulary. Moreover, whereas Gullah is a Creole, AAVE is considered a dialect-—that is, a version of a standard language that differs from that language in pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary. In the 1970s, preservationists began to record Gullah in response to a rapid decline in the number of Gullah speakers. In the 1980s and 1990s, interest in Gullah grew, leading to Gullah translations of traditional Amerikkkan stories and parts of the Bible, bilingual cookbooks, and the production of a television program based on the lives of inhabitants of a fictional Sea Island. Source: The Encyclopedia of African-American Heritage and Wikipedia
Posted on: Sun, 24 Aug 2014 13:38:42 +0000