It occurs to me, however, that, assembled and catalogued in
this way, they may create the idea that slovenly English is generally
spoken in the city. If so they give an impression which I should not
wish to convey, since Charleston has no more peculiarities of language
than New York or Boston, and not nearly so many as a number of other
cities. Cultivated Charlestonians have, moreover, the finest voices I
have heard in any American city.
CHAPTER XXXI
"GULLA" AND THE BACK COUNTRY
The most extraordinary negro dialect I know of is the "gulla" (sometimes
spelled "gullah") of the rice plantation negroes of South Carolina and
of the islands off the South Carolina and Georgia coast. I believe that
the region of Charleston is headquarters for "gulla niggers," though I
have heard the argot spoken as far south as Sepeloe Island, off the town
of Darien, Georgia, near the Florida line. Gulla is such an extreme
dialect as to be almost a language by itself. Whence it came I do not
know, but I judge that it is a combination of English with the primitive
tongues of African tribes, just as the dialect of old Creole negroes, in
Louisiana, is a combination of African tribal tongues with French.
A Charleston lady tells me that negroes on different rice
plantations--even on adjoining plantations--speak dialects which differ
somewhat, and I know of my own knowledge that thick gulla is almost
incomprehensible to white persons who have not learned, by long
practice, to understand it.
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