Listen to Gullah Language | Gullah Net

INSTRUCTIONS: Click on an English word to see and hear the Gullah word.

About Gullah Language

Gullah is also a language. It was developed among Africans as a way to communicate with people from other tribes and Europeans. For years, people thought Gullah was poor English. In the 1930s, African-American scholar Lorenzo Dow Turner studied Gullah on the Sea Islands. He determined that this language is made up of English and over 4,000 words from many different African languages.

People who speak Gullah sound like people who speak Krio, one of the common languages spoken among the people from Sierra Leone, West Africa. The similarity in the languages is an example of the connection between West Africans and the people from the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia.

Gullah is a spoken language and written the way it sounds.

WORD BANK

Gullah (gul.lah) n. - one of a group of people of African ancestry that live in the Sea Islands and coastal areas of South Carolina, Georgia, and northern Florida; the creolized language of the Gullahs, based on English and several other African languages and spoken in Sea Island communities.

tribe (tribe) n. - a group of people who live together, share the same culture, language and history; and have a traditional way of life.

scholar (schol.ar) n. - a person who has a great deal of knowledge, usually about a particular subject.

Sierra Leone (sier.ra le.one) n. - a country on the coast of West Africa.

Standards

• 3-2 The student will demonstrate an understanding of the exploration and settlement of South Carolina.
  • The inhabitants of the early Carolina colony included native, immigrant, and enslaved peoples. To understand how these various groups interacted to form a new and unique culture, the student will utilize the knowledge and skills set forth in the follo...
    • 3-2.5 Explain the role of Africans in developing the culture and economy of South Carolina, including the growth of the slave trade; slave contributions to the plantation economy; the daily lives of the enslaved people; the development of the Gullah cu...
• 3.4.1.PR Investigate the cultural characteristics of places and regions around the world.
• This indicator prompts students to inquire about how geography influences economic activities around the world. Economic livelihoods may be expressed by agriculture (subsistence, commercial), industry, and services.
  • This indicator prompts students to inquire about different ways to represent the distribution of various cultural characteristics, like belief systems, clothing, food, and shelter, and the varied ways in which people make a living in different world r
• 3.5.4.AG Use maps and other geographic representations to identify how migration patterns affect people and places.
• This indicator was written to promote inquiry into the unique development of ethnic, political, and religious identities in the New England, Mid-Atlantic, and Southern colonies.
  • This indicator was developed to promote inquiry into how European colonization impacted the interaction among African, European, and Native American cultural groups.
  • This indicator was developed to promote inquiry into how South Carolina developed as a result of the relationship among various ethnic, political, and religious groups.
• 8.1.E Utilize a variety of primary and secondary sources to examine multiple perspectives and influences of the economic, political, and social effects of South Carolina’s settlement and colonization on the development of various forms of government across the colonies.