Newsgroups: sci.lang
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From: cloutier@critpath.org (Diane Cloutier)
Subject: Re: African languages in North America
Message-ID: <DGI9rJ.FIB@critpath.org>
Summary: Gullah is the only sigificant survival
Organization: Critical Path Project
References: <45oefu$jpc@nms.telepost.no>
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 1995 19:50:07 GMT
Lines: 30

In article <45oefu$jpc@nms.telepost.no> jonhaug@telepost.no (Jon Harald
Haug) writes:
>In my country (Norway), unknown is the fate of the native languages of
>the African slaves after their arrival in America. Does anyone know how
>long African languages did survive in the USA (or the colonies preceding 
>it)?
>
Hundreds of African words survived in the Gullah dialect of the South
Carolina and Georgia Sea islands, some to this day. Africans in these
parts were largely imported from the same part of Africa - around
Sierra Leone - were geographically isolated, and practised specialized
rice-farming and sea-fishing techniques that set them apart from other
North American slaves. Gullah is, however, an English pidgin, not an
African language.

Most African languages seem to have disappeared in North America within
the first generation. Newly-arrived slaves seldom had the opportunity to
marry a member of their own language group, unlike Norwegian and other
European immigrants. Even if they had, this language would have been
useless to their children, who would have needed English in order to
communicate with their peers.

In the Caribbean, however, I have read reports that Yoruba was still
used on some of the British islands as late as 1950 as a liturgical
language, by practitioners of West African religion there.

-Tony West (from Diane Cloutier's account)



