Gullah Creole

Gullah, also known as Geechee, is an English-based creole used by African-Americans living in what is now referred to as the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor. This corridor is an approximately 400 miles long strip that runs from St. John’s River in Florida to Cape Fear River in North Carolina. In North and South Carolina the language is typically called Gullah, and in Georgia and Florida it is typically called Geechee. Gullah began as a pidgin language used by the slaves who lived on the plantations in the Gullah Geechee Corridor. The most important crops in the area were rice, cotton, and indigo, and the plantation owners wanted slaves to work these crops on their land. The plantation owners decided that slaves from West Africa
would best suit their needs because they would be able to handle the climatic conditions in the region and because they were already familiar with the crops which were indigenous to a part of West Africa known as the Windward Coast. The slaves from West Africa brought with them the knowledge and skills that the plantation owners desired. They knew how to make the tools needed for rice harvesting, such as sweet grass baskets, and how to construct dikes and canals to handle the water. However, even though the slaves had the proper knowledge, they couldn’t communicate it to the other slaves. Despite the fact that most of the slaves came from West Africa, they didn’t speak a common language because, like today, Africa had many different languages.
Therefore, the slaves needed to develop a means of communication which resulted in Gullah. Gullah developed through the contact of the slaves’ different West African languages mixed in with the colonial English of the plantation owners and overseers. As new generations of native Gullah speakers were born on the plantations, Gullah changed from a pidgin to a creole. As Romaine (2000) explains, “(a) creole is a nativized pidgin, expanded in form and function to meet the communicative needs of a community of native speakers” (p. 169). The Gullah language allowed the slaves, who lived in relative isolation given the geographic barriers of the region, to recreate their native cultures and traditions. Not only is Gullah reminiscent of West African languages, but many of the Gullahs’ cultural and spiritual habits and beliefs are similar to those of ethnic groups in West Africa. This supports Romaine’s (2000) claim that “(t)he Atlantic creoles were largely products of the slave trade in West Africa” (p. 174). Even the names Gullah and Geechee are thought to have West African roots. Some people believe that Gullah is a shortened form of Angola, from where almost 40% of the slaves in the region originated. Others believe that Gullah and Geechee were terms borrowed from the native languages of West Africa. Another theory is that
the names come from the story of Golas (Gullahs) and Gizzis (Geechees) about two cultural groups who lived around Liberia during the time of the African slave trade. Most of the Gullah vocabulary has an English origin, but the grammar and pronunciation strongly resemble elements from many of the different West African languages such as Krio, Ewe, Igbo, and Yoruba. This fits with Romaine’s (2000) explanation that pidgins and creoles are mixed languages with the vocabulary of the superstrate (also called the lexifier or base language) and the grammar of the substrate has been the traditional basis for classifying these languages according to their lexical base. (p. 169)
Therefore, since Gullah is an English-based creole, English is the superstrate and West African languages are the substrate.
Gullah is not simply a version of bad English. It has its own grammar, phonology, idiomatic expressions, and vocabulary. In the 1920s a synchronic orthography was even established for it by Ambrose Elliott Gonzales. However, none of this prevents the Gullah language from having a low status. Some speakers only use the language at home or in the Gullah community because they fear the stigma attached to using it. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has claimed that he was so traumatized as a child by the ridicule he received for his Geechee accent that he now refrains from speaking during the oral arguments of the Supreme Court. Despite this stigma, many of today’s Gullahs are proud of their language and heritage. The fact that it is a tight knit community that values its language, heritage, and cultural identity means that the language has a strong chance of surviving. The Gullah community is working hard to promote itself while making sure to protect its linguistic and cultural integrity. Gullah, like all creoles, has a rich history. It was created from a unique mixture of English and many different West African languages. We may never know for sure exactly which languages influenced Gullah because, as Romaine (2000) explained, “(i)t is not always possible to trace the origin of a particular creole feature to a unique source” (p. 184). Regardless of
its sources, Gullah is now an important part of America’s history, culture, and, hopefully, future.