Talk:Gullah language

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[edit] Moved language portions from Gullah article

The Gullah language article was created from the "Language" section of Gullah. The relevant items from Talk:Gullah were moved to this page. Jorge Stolfi 00:00, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] African constructions in Gullah

I don't know anything about the structure of Gullah but looking at the examples of African influenced constructions, there are two that dont seem to me to belong there. The first is the so-called Topicalization construction, which is actually an instance of left dislocation, since the clause-initial phrase is resumed by a pronoun. The English literal translation is perfectly grammatical so I dont know why this particular construction is an instance of African influence.

"Da' big dog, 'e bite'um -- "That big dog, it bit him" (Topicalization)"

Also, the focus fronting example looks alot like a cleft (Im not sure but "duh" looks alot like "that"), which we also have in English, e.g. the gloss.

Duh him cry out so -- "It is he who cried out that way" (Front Focusing)

--Maziart 23:01, 15 April 2007 (UTC)


Maziart, these things don't have to be mutually exclusive. A feature of Gullah grammar or sentence structure can be typical of African languages AND also found in English. The English-based Atlantic Creole Language Family of which Gullah is a member arose in West Africa and in the Americas in situations in which Africans and English speakers were forging a common means of communication, and in doing so, as one would expect, they sometimes selected features that were common to both African languages and English. The African-derived structures listed in the entry on Gullah are extremely common in African languages. Some are also found in English, but are perhaps not as prominent in English as in African languages. That is the case with topicalization as Africanist linguists call it (or left dislocation).

As for the focus fronting example, "duh" does not mean "that." It's the copula verb, meaning "is" or "it is."

Sorie June 22, 2007

[edit] Pidgin or creole?

I haven't actually done any research into the matter, but it seems likely that the Gullah langauge is in fact a full creole, and not just a pidgin. Anyone know more than I do?

My college history text says it's a dialect of english, but my teacher (whose specialty is african american history says it's a full language and definitely is NOT a pidgin language.

[edit] It *is* a Creole, and maybe its own Language

The Difference between a Creole and a Language is essentially in the degree of mutual intelligibility. For some speakers of Southern AAVE (African American Vernacular English), Gullah may be more easily understandable, and hence would classify as a Creole; however, for most speakers of the Standard English dialect, Gullah would qualify as a separate Language, because of the lack of mutual intelligibility.

Quoting my friend Anne Charity,

"The two [notions] (speaking about the distinction between Creoles and actual languages) are not mutually exclusive...There are many languages that are Creole in origin. But if you mean is it a dialect of English vs. a language, that is a difficult question depending on who you ask because mutual intelligbility will vary (i.e. Southern AAVE speakers have more in common with Gullah than white speakers from the midwest.) All this technicality put aside, most linguists and locals alike agree that Gullah is a language that is a Creole in origin and historical classification.

Here are some good, brief definitions:"

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/messeas/handouts/pjcreol/node1.html

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/messeas/handouts/pjcreol/node3.html#SECTION00012000000000000000

"In the Creole literature, the ideas of mutual intelligibility are phrased in terms of the creole continuum. The first part of this web page give a good overview:"

http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~patrickp/papers/TestingContinuum.html


Hope this helps. Feel free to email me with questions.

nela@dartmouth.edu


I would suggest that most speakers of Southern American English, and not just Southern AAVE, would easily be able to understand Gullah, though some features would be unusual or sound more West Indies. It certainly can't compare, say, to Belizian Creole. Janko 19:41, 18 July 2006 (UTC)Janko

Has anybody actually conducted any research to determine this? My hypothesis would be that most English speakers, wherever they are from, will get 99% of it. I did. "Gufa hoe" threw me at first, until I figured out he was saying "gopher hole." Ocanter 19:59, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some facts about Gullah

When English speakers see the modern form of Gullah written down, they always think they can "understand" it because it contains so many English words. But they don't really understand ALL of what's on the page, because they're not clued in to underlying features of the grammar that indicate tense, aspect, etc. English speakers tend to assume that they're seeing a substandard form of English, rather than a different code altogether. It's the underlying grammar that's different.

It's also important to note that modern SPOKEN Gullah has such a different cadence and rhythm from English, and is spoken so very quickly, that outsiders can't understand it in most cases. White people AND black people from outside the lowcountry are usually baffled by Gullah when they HEAR it.

If you're interested in Gullah, it's also important to go back to the story texts collected in the 19th century when Gullah was in a more conservative form than today. One of the most accurate collections was done by Charles Colcock Jones in the 1880s. His book of Gullah stories was reprinted by the U of GA Press in 2000. The Gullah language of that time was very similar structurally to basilect (deep) forms of Jamaican Creole, Belize Creole, and Sierra Leone Krio language (West Africa).

Sorie

I have never seen so many gross generalizations categorized as "facts." "They alwalys think . . ." "They don't really understand . . ." These are not facts, nor are they particularly well founded opinions.
I find it interesting that in the only authentic written record of "Geechee" speech in the article (Jones's), there is not a single word of African origin. Nor is there a grammatical feature which is not also found in some other dialect of English. For my part, I can say that many of the non-standard forms in "Geechee" that represent various verb tenses, moods, and aspects are familiar to me from the way rural whites speak where I'm from in Michigan. This is not to argue against influence on the latter by the former, but simply to point out that they are not all that different. The recordings make it clear that there is an African element to the pronunciation, but that is not really surprising. After listening to the Library of Congress recordings, I found, quite contrary to your prediction, that hearing the language spoken, it was quite easy to tell what the speaker was saying, whereas it was more difficult trying to hear the accent the written record text was trying to convey. I find it difficult to believe that anyone would be "baffled" by people speaking this way.
There are, incidentally, some exotic, perhaps even bizarre, elements to some of the stories related here, even though the dialect is not really that different. The story where God cuts Adam's tail off certainly begs some explanation. Do the anthropologists have any ideas about that?
Ocanter 19:58, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Ocanter,

You have joined a long line of commentators in the 19th century who denied significant African influences in the Gullah language.

But after Lorenzo Dow Turner published his "Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect" in 1949, no legitimate scholar has taken that argument seriously. Turner's book is now in its 4th edition, which speaks for itself. And the University of South Carolina Press will issue a major new biography of Turner in 2007 -- "Lorenzo Dow Turner: Father of Gullah Studies."

The African influences in Gullah speech are extremely strong. They range from very obvious features such as African loan words (which certainly do exist in Charles Colcock Jones' volume), to more subtle features like African grammatical structures, African sentence structures, and African influences on the semantic structure.

All of this requires time and study to comprehend.

I can only say that linguists and anthropologists have been seriously engaged in describing the African influences in Gullah speech for the past 85 years and have not exhausted the subject yet. But if your mind is already made up, the thousands of pages of research these scholars have published will probably still not convince you.

Sorie

Dear Sorie,
With whom are you arguing? I did not "deny significant African influence in the Gullah language." "Significant influence" is a term that is so vague it renders any statement about it meaningless. You might say that loan words (assuming you can actually produce a recorded example of Geechee speach that has a single African loan word in it) represent "significant influence." I may say they don't, especially when it's a loan word for "turtle," and it sounds remarkably similar to the English word "critter." You are arguing with these "19th century" cats, if they really exist (I doubt they do--"19th century" is a catch-all word for "heretic" among liberals), not with me. My point was that you have not provided any evidence for your opinion, and that you are underestimating the intellectual ability of the average person based on your own inability to understand Geechee speach. It's really not that far out.
That will probably take some time to comprehend.
Ocanter 00:22, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I won't reply to your abusive messages with similar abuse. I'll just say that you've made many unwarranted assumptions.

First, you speak as if you've studied the subject of Gullah and know what you're talking about. But you're basing your comments solely on the wikipedia entry, which serves well as in introduction to the subject, but can't do more than that. You have very strong views -- to the point of name calling -- but it's clear you haven't read any of the scholarly literature; and until you do, you have no basis for an informed opinion.

A quick glance at Lorenzo Dow Turner's "Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect" would show you the author's list of almost 4,000 personal names of African origin and about 350 African loan words used in everyday speech at the time Turner made his study in the 1930s. Scholars have been studying these lists for 50 years, and far from overturning Turner's findings, they have confirmed them again and again. But of course, you'll never look at the academic literature.

Second, you've made assumptions about me and my supposed "ignorance" of Gullah speech. I lived in West Africa for years studying and speaking African languages and teaching linguistics at an African university. I also spent years doing research on Gullah speech on the South Carolina and Georgia sea islands. I can tell you that when someone who knows African languages looks at Gullah, the degree of African influence is immediately apparent.

Your first message pointed to your own experience with the speech of "rural whites in Michigan." That's not a valid basis for commenting on Gullah. And your belligerent tone seems to indicate someone not just with limited experience on this subject, but also a closed mind. I'm sure you'll reply with more invective, but I see no reason for engaging with you further.

Haha, I've got the liberal by the tail! You just said that my experience with the speech of rural whites in Michigan is not a valid basis for commenting on Gullah. But you insist your experience speaking West African languages is. In other words, you have started with the assumption that the speech I am referring to has no influence upon or from Gullah speech. But that is the very question at stake--where did these peculiar features in the dialect come from? You point out that some West African languages have some of the same features. I point out that some European American dialects have the same features. You insist that the dialect I am referring to, or some other American dialect, cannot have given rise to the features you are describing, I suppose because it is not African. But that is the very thing you are trying to show!
I am pointing out another dialect that has the same features. You have yet to show that the features in Gullah you describe cannot have come from something like this dialect, or from a common ancestor in England or America.
If you've done all this research, you should be able to point out not only direct parallels in West African languages (that are not English dialects, of course), but how those parallels are different from parallels in other English dialects.
I myself said that there is obvious West African "influence," especially in the pronunciation. But it is also clear that a language that is nearly 100% English words (again, I'm waiting for you to produce a counterexample) is more "influenced" by English than by anything else. I am not denying "African influence."
Also, when you use quotes, please try to quote something I actually said. You'll notice that on the talk page, the first use of the word "ignorant" is yours. I did not say you were ignorant of Gullah or anything.
I used to run to the library every time a liberal gave me a book title. This is ultimately a waste of time. When you refer to this wealth of research, please give me a citation with a page number and a relevant direct quote. I'm tired of users who refer to "thousands of pages of research" but who can't seem to produce a citation from any of it. Please supply some citations for your claims, and if they are citations to someone's opinion, please spell the opinions out with analysis like that I asked for above. Otherwise, you're making it pretty obvious you have not looked at all this literature too closely yourself.
Peace, Ocanter 14:24, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Also, I think you may be overstating the importance of loan words. If you look at the Gullah speech in the article, you will see words of Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew origin (none of African origin, however). But you will see that over 90% of them are of Anglo-Saxon origin, and that these form the complete set of grammatical function words, such as articles, verbs for "to be," etc. This represents a more fundamental position of English in the language than the few Greek and Latin words. Of course, the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew all point to real cultural influence. But the nearly complete dominance of Anglo-Saxon words points to even greater influence. Sorry if you don't like that.
Peace, Ocanter 14:32, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


... just a quick note from SC. In reference to the term "cootuh" for turtles, (specifically sea turtles, at least in my direct experience) that particular term does not seem to be a corruption of the term "critter" as Oscanter states. "Cootuh" is used specifically for turtles, while a contrasting term which most likely IS that corruption is "creetir," which is also present and used for various small animals. (I don't know if that's trad. Gullah, or an example of the mainstreaming of the creole...)

In a more general counter to Oscanter's claims of understanding, most of my Charleston family cannot understand rapid-fire Gullah, unless it's slowed down and "pidgeonized" for our listening benefit, and despite presenting our Gullah friends to many in our extended family, it is a rare person from out of state who can "get" most of what's spoken, even with the speakers going slowly for their benefit. I do also wonder if the audio presentation that Oscanter listened to was also biased, as the Gullah people generally KNOW that people can't understand them, and tend to slow down then speaking to non-Gullah. That subconsious knowledge might have resulted in a more Americanized dialect than the baseline? Just a thought. As a contrast to Oscanter, due to many many many hours with weavers and craftspeople while a small bored child, I have what I'd term a pretty good grasp, and even then I KNOW I miss about 20-40 % of any given conversation that I'm listening in on. (Although the sweet ladies did comment that my accent was not too bad when I pitched in.) :/ 165.166.3.170 23:46, 7 May 2007 (UTC) SCLibrarian