Gullah Language - Related Languages

Related Languages

Gullah resembles other English-based creole languages spoken in West Africa and the Caribbean Basin. These include the Krio language of Sierra Leone, Bahamian Dialect, Jamaican Creole, Bajan Creole and Belizean Kriol. It is speculated that these languages use English as a lexifier (or vocabularies derived largely from English) and that their syntax (grammars and sentence structures) are strongly influenced by African languages but research by Salikoko Mufwene and others suggests that non-standard Englishes may have also influenced Gullah's (and other creoles') syntactical features.

Gullah is most closely related to Afro-Seminole Creole, spoken in scattered Black Seminole communities in Oklahoma, Texas, and Northern Mexico. The Black Seminoles' ancestors were Gullahs who escaped from slavery in coastal South Carolina and Georgia in the 18th and 19th centuries and fled into the Florida wilderness. They emigrated from Florida after the Second Seminole War (1835–42). Their modern descendants in the West speak a conservative form of Gullah resembling the language of 19th-century plantation slaves.