If you’ve been keeping up with my Gullah Teacha posts to learn some #Gullah/#Geechee #language basics, you’re ready to level up! Yah, Ah guh laan una affa mek y’ownt sentins. (Here, I will teach you how to create sentences of your own.) Reply with your Gullah sentence! #weoutchea #harvard #krakteet | gullahteacha.com 📚🍎
Mannn, lukyah… uf y’een dun git dat @rankytankymusic ablum ‘Good Time’, una bes fa run, d’on waak, fa git um… ee jus a’mos mek mi rek outchea, Holy Ghos ridin’ de whup! 🤣 #weoutchea #gullah #geechee #muzik 🙌🏿 @quianaparler @csmusician @clayrossmusic @kslamilton gullahteacha.com RankyTanky.com
One of the most complicated parts of learning the Gullah/Geechee language for non-native speakers is the word/sound ‘ee.’ Which can be used in place of virtually any antecedent, as every type of pronoun, be it singular or plural. Ganda disya!
Shout out to the @EdisonK8School students who visited campus today with #ProjectTeach, & did quite well in my #Gullah class! Hol um doun. #weoutchea #geechee @Harvard @HarvardLocal
‘Ebadid’ (evadid) is a Gullah adverb that essentially means ‘always’ or ‘have/has ever.’ The spelling of ‘ebadid’ may alternate the ‘B’ & ‘V’ to denote its various pronunciations in different regions of the #Gullah #Geechee corridor. Peep disya! #weoutchea http://gullahteacha.com
Up at dayclean: thesis committee member for a brilliant student, giving feedback on their midterm presentation via livestream, then off to teach my morning #Gullah BA class, followed by my Jamaican Patois AA class, & Jamaican Patois BA (not counting my Gullah AA class). Woi! Lonnng day, but mi kyaa dun.💪🏾🌞 #weoutchea #geechee #teacherlife @harvard | gullahteacha.com 📚🍎
First fall 2019 class of Harvard’s Project Teach, done! I had a blast with the bright young scholars of Gardener Pilot Academy. Remember what else we talked about, class… life is a ‘choose your own adventure’ story; our choices are how we turn the pages. Mi gladdee fa meet oona! (I’m happy to meet you!) 🙌🏿 #weoutchea #gullah #geechee #harvard | gullahteacha.com
I cold-called #Mama on speaker in class so my students could hear a real #Gullah #Geechee conversation live. Of course, she switched it up a lil proppa proppa when I told her they could hear us, but it was the sweetest moment I’ve had in class thus far… she even ended the call with “Okeh, den… luv yaw,” including my students. Man, listennn… 😭! 🌞🖤 #weoutchea #gullah #geechee #harvard #ummi #moda #mumma #madre | gullahteacha.com 📚🍎
(excerpt from ‘Protecting Gullah Culture’ by Victoria Hansen for @SCPublicRadio – SEP 27, 2019)
The Language – Sunn M’Cheaux’s long locs sway as he shares his story at the Penn Center on Saint Helena Island. He too was raised in a Gullah community, in Mount Holly, and remembers being shamed in school for speaking the native language he learned at home. Now he teaches a first of its kind Gullah language class at, wait for it, Harvard University.” — with Vic Hansen and SC Public Radio.
“People who have gone through a life time, decades and decades of oppression and degradation and discrimination for speaking this way, they deserve a win,” he says. “They deserve an I told you so.”
Growing up, M’Cheaux says, Gullah was not considered a legitimate language, but broken English. Those who spoke it were called uneducated, not intelligent. Yet the Gullah language is clever.
“Think about the conditions under which Gullah was created,” he says. “It’s everything.”
Enslaved people from all parts of Africa needed a way to communicate quickly, with few words and over the heads of overseers. They combined Creole and English with words flowing together in a kind of rhythm that made it difficult for anyone else to understand. Secrecy was essential.
“With Gullah Geechee people we created it and preserved our language under the threat of death for being literate.”
So why teach it now? M’Cheaux says to save it. The loss of elders and ancestral land, whether to development or climate change, could be detrimental.”
There will be so much missing from our unique Gullah identity as a result of not living in the corridor or not living on that property,” he says. “You don’t want to say it disappears. You want to be hopeful, but let’s be practical.”
There’s also a matter of pride, encouraging young people to embrace their culture. “They deserve to have a thing they can point to and say, that’s me.”
#weoutchea#gullah#geechee#harvard | gullahteacha.com 📚🍎
Please visit southcarolinapublicradio.org to read the full article. Which also features Victoria Smalls of Penn Center, Geechee Experience, & more!
