The Gullah Language

Gullah is a language spoken by the African American population living on the sea islands and coastal region of the US states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and northeast Florida, and those commonly known as the Gullah people. The Gullah language is what linguists call an English-based creole language, which develop in the context of trade, colonialism, and slavery when people of diverse backgrounds are forced together and must devise a common means of communication.  In the case of Gullah, the vocabulary is largely English in origin, but the African languages have altered the pronunciation of almost all the English words.  Linguists today view Gullah and other creoles as complete and independent languages with their own systematic grammatical structures.  Read more . . .