GULLAH

GULLAH. The name of a member of a black community in the Sea Islands and coastal marshes of South Carolina, Georgia, and north-eastern Florida, and of the English-based CREOLE spoken by that community (also known as Sea Island Creole). Gullah is usually kept hidden from outsiders. It developed on 18c rice plantations after British colonists and their African slaves arrived in Charleston from Barbados in 1670, in an encounter among African languages such as Ewe, Hausa, Ibo, Mende, Twi, and Yoruba, the English of overseers from England, Ireland, and Scotland, and the maritime PIDGIN used in some West African forts and aboard slavers' ships. It shares many features with other Atlantic creoles, and is characterized by: (1) Distinctive words for tense and aspect: He bin come He came, He had come; He go come He will come, He would come; He duh come He is coming, He was coming; He done come He has come, He had come. He come may mean ‘He came’, ‘He has come’, ‘He comes’, but not ‘He will come’. (2) Pronouns more inclusive than in general English: He see um He or she saw him/her/it; also He see she He saw her, and He see we He or she saw us. A pronoun usually has the same form whether subject or possessive: He ain see he brother He hasn't seen his brother, He didn't see his brother. (3) Subordinate clauses introduced by say (Uh tell you say he done come I told you that he has/had come), and by fuh (Uh tell um fuh come I told him/her to come). Both particles can be left out: Uh tell you he done come; Uh tell um come. There is a continuum between Gullah and local varieties of AmE: for example, from He duh come and He duh comin through He comin to He's comin. English words of African origin that may have come wholly or partly through Gullah include goober peanut (compare Kimbundu nguba), and juke bawdy and disorderly (compare Bambara dzugu, wicked), as in juke house brothel or cheap roadhouse, and jukebox. See BAJAN, WEST AFRICAN PIDGIN ENGLISH.