Caroline Speaking Gullah and English

[MasterOfAllHeSurveyz]

I distantly related to the fellow who wrote this classic work in '49.

Lorenzo Dow Turner - Wikipedia

Bobby Seale speaking on him

 

[96Blue]

Y'all got that backwards. They did not come from the Bahamas to the USA. They fled the USA and went to the Bahamas after the first Seminole War in Florida. Gullah slaves that escaped slavery in South Carolina and Georgia fled to Northern Florida swamps and lived among Seminole Indians. Those Gullah became known as Black Seminole Indians.

"...Today, there are still small Black Seminole communities scattered by war across North America and the West Indies. The "Black Indians" live on Andros Island in the Bahamas where their ancestors escaped from Florida after the First Seminole War... ."

https://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Black Seminoles .pdf
BLACK SEMINOLES

Oh, alright. I did not know that.

 

[Samori Toure]

The deeper south you go the hardest it is for you to understand unless you familiar. They talk real fast too.

That is why I posted the Cedric the Entertainer video. He explains that shyt perfectly. They talk real fast.

 

[Nintendough]

No they made fun of them, because they were considered old fashioned and country as Hell. Black people that moved to the cities made fun of anything that they perceived as country. Being Country and being Gullah are not separate, because almost all AAs have a connection to NC, SC, Georgia and Virginia. They just moved inland to other Southern States, but that Country talk is from those areas.

My mother used to make fun of my grandmother, because of how my grandmother spoke. My mother moved to Chicago from Tennessee, so when she came back to Tennessee to speak with my grandmother she used to complain about my grandmother speaking a bunch of broken English. Well my grandmother and the other older people were difficult to understand, but once you were around them you figured out what they were saying.

Geechees are from Georgia. They are Gullah people that live near the Ogeechee River. I don't remember any Black person ever being upset being referred to as Gullah, but if you called them Geechee then you would have to fight them. That was an insult.

We are such a stupid and lost people. Making fun of our own shyt.

 

[im_sleep]

You got that wrong. Black people in Georgia, Mississippi, Northwest Florida and Alabama are going to have very similar cultures. As a matter of fact Mississippi and Alabama were heavily peopled by the people from South Carolina and Georgia.

I think what you actually mean is that the Black people in the Mid-South are going to be culturally different from Black people in the deep South. From what I have seen is that the people of Tennessee, North Carolina, Kentucky and Virginia have a lot of similarities; which stands to reason, because Tennessee and Kentucky were heavily peopled by North Carolina and Virginia residents.

AncestryDNA maintains genetic communities. My mother comes back to South Carolina. I come back to coastal North Carolina, which are the exact regions that my grandmother and her sister told us that our families are from. Additionally, DNA testing shows that maternal lines are Mende people from Sierra Leone; so this stuff is more accurate than people believe.

Personally I break it all into about three parts

Chesapeake
-Primary States: Virginia*, North Carolina
-Secondary States: Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia

Low Country
-Primary States: South Carolina*, Georgia
-Secondary States: Florida, North Carolina

Gulf Coast
-Primary States: Louisiana*, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas
-Secondary States: Arkansas, Tennessee

The star notates the epicenter.

The mid-south and border areas are where it gets tricky.

Like you could argue western Tennessee falls into the gulf, but eastern Tennessee would be different. Same with Florida.

Edit- I forgot to add Maryland as a primary Chesapeake state

 

[Samori Toure]

We are such a stupid and lost people. Making fun of our own shyt.

Not really. As time goes by people just don't want to be associated with somethings, because they find it embarassing. They may gain an appreciation for it as time goes by, but at a certain point in time there maybe pain associated with being known as this or that.

Here is a perfect example. How many Black Americans do you see playing the Banjo? They actually brought the instrument to the USA, but over time they were mad fun for playing the instrument; so they stopped playing it. Now days people think that White people invented the Banjo, when in fact it was Black people that invented it. Black people invented Country music, but they stopped playing that too. The same thing with the Steel Guitar. Black people from the sanctified church in Florida invented that instrument, because they could not afford an organ. Now Black people rarely play it, but you can hear the steel guitar played by White country musicians and in Hawaiian music.

 

[im_sleep]

Nah in GA being “country” i.e from Macon,Waycross,Columbus, etc Is not the same as when someone says you are “Geechee”. You are using “country” and “traditional” in the literal sense and i am using it in the sense that there are enough difference in the cultures that they can be seen as being distinct groups of people.

People from Florida and the Sea islands are a different kind of “country”.

Yeah I can see the term being used differently depending on where someone is from.

I had a lady from Virginia ask me if I was Geechie years ago. It threw me off for a second but I realized she was just trying to say I sounded very country(mind you I’m from California) as opposed to actually being Gullah/Geechie. I’d imagine in South Carolina/Georgia the term may hold more a little more distinction for some people.

 

[Samori Toure]

Personally I break it all into about three parts

Chesapeake
-Primary States: Virginia*, North Carolina
-Secondary States: Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia

Low Country
-Primary States: South Carolina*, Georgia
-Secondary States: Florida, North Carolina

Gulf Coast
-Primary States: Louisiana*, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas
-Secondary States: Arkansas, Tennessee

The star notates the epicenter.

The mid-south and border areas are where it gets tricky.

Like you could argue western Tennessee falls into the gulf, but eastern Tennessee would be different. Same with Florida.

I really can't tell the difference between East, Middle and West Tennessee dialect. They all sound the same to me, but I have noticed that some people in West Tennessee can sound real deep country like South Mississippi.

 

[Nintendough]

Not really. As time goes by people just don't want to be associated with somethings, because they find it embarassing. They may gain an appreciation for it as time goes by, but at a certain point in time there maybe pain associated with being known as this or that.

Here is a perfect example. How many Black Americans do you see playing the Banjo? They actually brought the instrument to the USA, but over time they were mad fun for playing the instrument; so they stopped playing it. Now days people think that White people invented the Banjo, when in fact it was Black people that invented it. Black people invented Country music, but they stopped playing that too. The same thing with the Steel Guitar. Black people from the sanctified church in Florida invented that instrument, because they could not afford an organ. Now Black people rarely play it, but you can hear the steel guitar played by White country musicians and in Hawaiian music.

Yes really. We need to love all of our shyt. Stop creating cultures for other people and hold onto your shyt. We got messicans running around calling black music and calling mayates all on one breath. You got cacs playing Eminem on a rock station when we invented rock but probably won't play an isley bros song till Ron rests on power as some half ass tribute. Pride is dead and so are we, if we don't wake up and claim ours.

 

[im_sleep]

I really can't tell the difference between East, Middle and West Tennessee dialect. They all sound the same to me, but I have noticed that some people in West Tennessee can sound real deep country like South Mississippi.

Exactly this, I think there’s a good amount of overlap between that part of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas that all touch each other.

Honestly the core of the gulf region IMO are the coasts and the cities, towns, deltas, etc up and down the Mississippi River from New Orleans up to Memphis.

 

[Apollo Creed]

I really can't tell the difference between East, Middle and West Tennessee dialect. They all sound the same to me, but I have noticed that some people in West Tennessee can sound real deep country like South Mississippi.

West Tenn sound like Arkansas and St Louis ppl to me (at least Memphis).

 

[cjlaw93]

The Lyft drivers in Charleston who were white told me they barely understand a word when these folks speak

That’s they way we like it

 

[JayStarwind]

When I found out that the Gullah-Geeche went from southern North Carolina to northern Florida, I was like . That's basically a whole country in a country.

Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor | Where Gullah Geechee Culture Lives

I don't know how accurate this statement is, but, it seems African-Americans actually do have their own language.

No wonder my grandmother sounds similar. My mema is from St. Augustine and is geechier than a mf. Not like aunty in the video though.

 

[im_sleep]

So, geechee/gullah people are descendants of Caribbean slaves?

I think people here the similarity of the accents and that’s the go to assumption. Not to mention a lot of early scholarship that’s been debunked said the same.

IMO the kind of accents you hear from Gullah/Geechie and Caribbean folks are closer to an African accent while what you hear on the average Southern AA is closer to the middle, and that varies BTW, but I’d be posting all day to explain how.

Anyway my theory is that the baseline of AA culture, including the more common Southern AA accent, got its development in the Chesapeake. Smaller plantations, more interaction with whites, especially in the first 100 years, that kind of set the foundation. Plus VA exported more slaves than ANY state(South Carolina comes close) and that influence exported a whole lot more with little importation from other places, which is why the accents people associate with a Charleston/Savannah or NOLA sound a lot like a hybrid, and may vary depending on who you talk to, because those places were the epicenters of their particular region which had different circumstances in plantation setup, social interaction, etc. than the Chesapeake.

 

[Sankofa Alwayz]

Gullah-Geechie....The mother tongue of African American Venacular English aka Ebonics aka Black Speech.



#AAGang we gotta teach this to our kids and future generations Keep the roots alive fam.