USA Africa Dialogue Series - Gullah: The Fascinating African-Inflected Black American English Dialect

Snippet: "In researching the African heritage of the Gullah language in the 1930s,Turner first recorded the folk stories, chants, songs, speech patterns, etc. of the people, then went to the University of London to study with scholars of West African languages and cultures, where he learned and gained a working mastery of Sierra Leonean Krio, Twi (spoken mostly in Ghana), Kimbundu (spoken in Angola), Efik (spoken in the southern Nigerian state of Cross River), Fante (spoken in Ghana), Ewe (spoken in Ghana, Togo, and parts of Benin), Yoruba, Mandingo, and other African languages. 

He also studied Arabic at Yale University because, after interviewing scores of (French) West Africans in Paris in 1937, he realized that languages such as Mandingo and Yoruba were heavily influenced by Arabic, an influence that was transferred to Gullah, which I will discuss next week.

 In addition, Turner visited and lived in Africa, notably in Sierra Leone and in Nigeria, where he was a Visiting Fulbright Lecturer between 1950 and 1951 at the then University College in Lagos, which later became University of Lagos. That means he came to Nigeria a year after his book was published.

 Anyway, in Turner's book, from where I will draw examples of African influences in the Gullah language next week, we read of the fascinating story of a family in coastal Georgia that had preserved and handed down a folk song called "A waka" relatively unchanged for more than 200 years. It was later discovered that, that song is in Mende, a Niger-Congo language spoken Sierra Leone. 

More than 40 years after the publication of the book and 20 years after Turner's death, three researchers by the names of Joseph Opala, Cynthia Schmidt, and Tazieff Koroma found a rural Mende community in Sierra Leone where people still sing that very song—with the same diction, rhythm, and cadence. The story of the uncanny congruence between the centuries-old "A waka" folk song in the Gullah language in the United States and in the Mende language in modern Sierra Leone inspired the compellingly enthralling documentary film titled "The Language You Cry In."

The full article, with many useful links which I can't reproduce here, can be found here: http://www.farooqkperogi.com/2016/02/gullah-fascinating-african-inflected.html

Farooq Kperogi

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media
Kennesaw State University
402 Bartow Avenue, MD 2207 

Social Science Building 22 Room 5092

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperog

Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

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