Gullah

Continuing my perusal of reference 1, noticed in several previous posts, I came across the inhabitants of the Sea Islands, a chain of previously unheard of islands running along the eastern seaboard of the US, say between Charleston to the north and Jacksonville to the south. Islands where many of the African American inhabitants, speak a Creole called Gullah. Islands which were once isolated farming communities, which looked in Google's StreetView rather like a hot climate version of our own fens - and which are now being colonised by beach resorts and hotels.

Inhabitants mentioned by Reich on account of the very small fraction of their genome - around 4% - coming from Europe. A fraction typically more than 10% for African Americans and running up to 20%.

First stop was my rarely used encyclopaedia (reference 2) of such matters. I learn that 'Creole' originally applied to people born in the Americas to parents born in Portugal or Spain, but over the years the word has rather spread out. Perhaps in the present context it means people of heritage A living in country B, adjusting the dominant B language to take account of the A language. So we have plenty of Creoles of English spoken around the Caribbean. And in this case a Creole of English spoken off the eastern seaboard of the US.

A Creole in which the vocabulary is largely English, but with a lot of word order, syntax, pronunciation and spelling taken from a variety of African languages.

It seems that these islands were sufficiently isolated that Gullah, the Creole used the mainly black population, survived rather longer than other US Creoles - for example that used in the famous book of stories by Uncle Remus (reference 3).

Bing was not very helpful, so my second stop was DPLA (reference 4), which turned up the monograph snapped above. This one from the University of South Carolina and published in 1928. I am now the owner of 48 pages of good quality pdf about Gullah and the people who spoke it. Hopefully I shall be able to report back in due course.

Reference 1: Who we are and how we got here - David Reich - 2018.

Reference 2: Encyclopedia of Southern Culture - University of North Carolina Press - 1989. The cut-down, one fat volume version. I think the original version was a dozen or more fat volumes.

Reference 3: Uncle Remus - Joel Chandler Harris - 1880 or so. My copy, illustrated by Rene Cloke, was published by Gawthorne, possibly in 1949, my birth year. Originally sold by the late lamented Bowes & Bowes of Trinity Street, Cambridge. Not sure whether it is the family copy or a charity shop replacement. On a good day, I used to be able to read it aloud in a fair approximation to the proper accent.

Reference 4: https://dp.la/.