And now Harvard University has chosen to recognize the richness of Gullah and especially its language, a patois of English and Central and West African languages.
The Charleston City Paper reports that Charleston native and performance artist Sunn m’Cheaux spent the fall semester at Harvard teaching an introductory version of a course on Gullah as part of the
African Language Program at Harvard. It reports:
The class came to fruition after a graduate student requested a Gullah course. The student phoned him and asked if he would be willing to meet with the head of the program, Dr. John Mugane. M’Cheaux, who graduated from Goose Creek High School and didn’t go to college, found that Dr. Mugane was impressed with how quickly m’Cheaux was able to teach him some Gullah basics.
“He starts talking about getting my information and taking a picture for the website, and I’m thinking to myself, ‘Wait a minute — did I just get hired?’” m’Cheaux said in a phone interview with
CP.
Mugane argues that offering Gullah, along with the 44 other languages taught in the program, increases students’ chances of accurately portraying different communities.
“To engage in intellectual and professional work in the Gullah community, we deem it necessary even critical that scholars be literate in Gullah whose basic demonstration is an ability to hold non-trivial conversations with the people they write about, including (and especially) in Gullah, the language of the people they write about,” Dr. Mugane said in an e-mail to
CP.
Because its mostly an orally transferred language, M’Cheaux uses the few Gullah reference books and literature available as course materials, but has developed his own curriculum, including video chats between students and native speakers.
