The Gullah Language free essay sample

Kiesha Jamison September 18th 2009 The History of Gullah and Geechee Culture The Gullah culture started with the transportation of African slaves to the Sea Islands of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. The Sea Islands served as an excellent location for the Gullah culture because of its separation from the mainland. The African slaves, who came from different regions in African, brought with them their language, culture and traditions. Collectively these traditions and languages have merged into one to form Gullah. The Gullah culture has survived over the years by Gullah elders passing down the language and traditions to their children. However, over the past fifty years the Gullah culture has started to die. Three significant factors are the development of resorts along the Sea Islands, the movement of Gullah descendants to larger cities, in search of employment and the education of Gullah descendants. The later of the factors has severely damaged the Gullah culture. As the Gullah people are becoming educated, they are taught that it is no longer acceptable to speak â€Å"broken-English†. However the Gullah language is more than just â€Å"broken-English†. It is a art form that serves as the link between Africans and African-Americans. Gullah is a mixture of Elizabethan English (16th and 17th century) and a mixture of various African dialects including: Via, Mende, Twi, Ewe, Hausa, Yoruba, Ibo, Kikongo. In Gullah one word can express several thoughts. Ex. â€Å"e†- he, she or it and â€Å"shum† see, saw, hi, her, it or them. Pure Gullah is hardly heard anymore. As each generation passes, more and more of the Gullah history is lost. The Gullah that you see posted on the Internet and in the books is a simplified version of Gullah. It has been said that one can hear the ruffling of the marsh grass and the sound of the water beating across the shores in the rhythms of Gullah. When heard talking Gullah speakers are often compared to Jamaicans. Gullah is dubbed as a â€Å"cousin language† to Caribbean dialects. Unlike other Southern dialects, Gullah is spoken fast and rapidly. A Board of Trustees established Georgia in 1732 with the primary purposes of settling impoverished British citizens and creating a mercantile system that would supply England with needed agricultural products. The colony enacted a 1735 antislavery law, but the prohibition was lifted in 1750. West Africans, the argument went, were far more able to cope with the climatic conditions found in the South. And, as the growing wealth of South Carolinas rice economy demonstrated, slaves were far more profitable than any other form of labor available to the colonists. Runaway slaves from the Sea Islands were harbored under Spanish protection in Florida prior to the Second Seminole War (1835-42). Native American refugees from around the South formed an alliance with African runaways to create the Seminole Nation. The name Seminole is from the Spanish word cimarron, meaning runaway. The 1842 agreement between the United States and Spain, which ended the Seminole hold on Florida, caused a migration to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). Some Seminoles followed Spanish protectors to Cuba and to Andros Island in the Bahamas. Aspects of West African heritage have survived at each stage of the circle of migration, with rice, language, and spirituality persisting as cultural threads into the twentieth century. The Geechee/Gullah culture on the Sea Islands of Georgia has retained a heritage that spans two continents. In the early 1930s Lorenzo Turner, a African linguist, discovered that the Gullah people could recite African words and phrases. In 1932, Turner came to the Sea Islands in hopes of finding someone who could recite an African phrase, in a small remote area on one of the Georgia Sea Islands he found Amelia Dawley. For $25 dollars, not only could Dawley recite a phrase but she recited four lines of a Mende funeral song. Turner recorded this event in his book entitled Africanism in the Gullah Dialect. Nearly sixty years later, in 1989 Joseph Opala and Dr. Cynthia Schmidt gave a recording of Turner’s tape to a Freetown choral group. In 1991, Schmidt and Opala were informed that Dawley’s daughter, Mary Moran still lived in the area that Turner found her mother. Moran was able to recite the song that her mother sung for Turner. Preparations were made to find a Mende tribal member who knew the song. After a long search the pair found Baindu Jabati. Jabatis grandmother taught her the song. Basket weaving is a long standing African tradition, brought to the sea islands by the slaves. The main purpose for making baskets were for rice cultivation. Documentation of the developing culture on the Georgia islands dates to the nineteenth century. Originally baskets were made from longleaf pine needles and stripes of palmetto leaf. Today the baskets are made with sweet grass and palmetto leaf. Today, tourism has made Basket weaving a profitable profession. Making nets is a long standing African tradition, that was brought over by the African slaves. Nets have been used for centuries by the Gullah people as a way to catch shrimp, fish, crabs, etc. When it comes to church denomination, majority of the Gullah people are either Baptist or Methodist (includes AME). Praise houses were a place of worship and praise. Since the 1960s most praise houses have been closed and services are now held within a church. Gullahs follow Christian belief except they believe in multiple souls. A hag must stop and count the number of bristles in the broomstick and by the time she finishes it will be daylight. Documentation of the developing culture on the Georgia islands dates to the nineteenth century. By the late twentieth century, researchers and scholars had confirmed a distinctive group and identified specific commonalities with locations in West Africa. The research of Mary A. Twining and Keith E. Baird in Sea Island Roots: African Presence in the Carolinas and Georgia (1991) investigates the common links of islanders to specific West African moved counterclockwise in a circle, making certain never to cross their feet. Some aspects of the ring shout are thought to be related to the communal dances found in many West African traditions. The word shout is thought to be derived from saut, a West African word of Arabic origin that describes an Islamic religious movement performed to exhaustion. Since the Civil War (1861-65), ring shouts have been held after Sunday church services and on weeknights in community meeting houses. The Gullah and Geechee culture lives deep within its members, and is still an important part of their society