You Got a Quarter?
Gullah is a creole language and form of non-standard English spoken by about 5,000 people in parts of Georgia and South Carolina. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was raised as a Gullah speaker. The vocabulary comes primarily from English, but it contains numerous Africanisms for which scholars have yet to produce detailed etymologies. Some of the African loanwords include cootuh (turtle), oonuh (the plural of you), nyam (eat), buckruh (white man), pojo (heron), swonguh (proud) and benne (sesame). The Gullah Geechee people are descendants of Africans enslaved on rice, indigo and Sea Island cotton plantations of the lower Atlantic coast and because of their isolation those plantations, they’ve preserved ancient foods, customs, arts, music and crafts in addition to language. There’s at least one Gullah word you’ve used and it may come as a surprise.