Editing Gullah language (section)

==Vocabulary==
The Gullah people have several words of [[Niger–Congo languages|Niger-Congo]] and [[Bantu languages|Bantu]] origin in their language that have survived to the present day, despite over four hundred years of slavery when African Americans were forced to speak English.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Pollitzer |first1=William S. |title=The Gullah People and Their African Heritage |date=2005 |publisher=University of Georgia Press |isbn=9780820327839 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2efDSQdNq-cC&q=african%20words |access-date=May 15, 2021 |archive-date=March 25, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220325025946/https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Gullah_People_and_Their_African_Heri/2efDSQdNq-cC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=african+words |url-status=live }}</ref>

The vocabulary of Gullah comes primarily from English, but there are numerous [[Africanisms]] that exist in their language for which scholars have yet to produce detailed etymologies. Some of the African [[loanwords]] include:
{{lang|gul|cootuh}} {{gloss|[[Pseudemys|turtle]]}},
{{lang|gul|oonuh}} {{gloss|you}} (plural), 
{{lang|gul|nyam}} {{gloss|eat}}, 
{{lang|gul|[[Buckra|buckruh]]}} {{gloss|white man}}, 
{{lang|gul|pojo}} {{gloss|[[heron]]}}, 
{{lang|gul|swonguh}} {{gloss|proud}}, and
{{lang|gul|benne}} {{gloss|[[sesame]]}}.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Africanisms in the Gullah dialect - Digital Library of Georgia|url=https://dlg.usg.edu/record/nge_ngen_m-8804|access-date=2021-07-27|website=dlg.usg.edu|archive-date=July 27, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210727194305/https://dlg.usg.edu/record/nge_ngen_m-8804|url-status=live}}</ref>

The Gullahs' English-based creole language is strikingly similar to [[Krio language|Sierra Leone Krio]] of West Africa and contains such identical expressions as 
{{lang|gul|bigyai}} {{gloss|[[greed]]y}}, 
{{lang|gul|pantap}} {{gloss|on top of}}, 
{{lang|gul|ohltu}} {{gloss|both}}, 
{{lang|gul|tif}} {{gloss|[[theft|steal]]}}, 
{{lang|gul|yeys}} {{gloss|[[ear]]}}, and
{{lang|gul|swit}} {{gloss|delicious}}.<ref name="krio"/> Linguists observe that 25% of the Gullah language's vocabulary originated from [[Sierra Leone]]. 
Songs and fragments of stories were traced to the [[Mende people|Mende]] and [[Vai people]], and simple counting in the Guinea/Sierra Leone dialect of the [[Fula people of Sierra Leone|Fula people]] was also observed.<ref>{{cite book |last1=National Park Service |title=Low Country Gullah Culture Special Resource Study and Final Environmental Impact Statement |page=73 |url=https://www.nps.gov/ethnography/research/docs/ggsrs_book.pdf |access-date=September 14, 2021 |archive-date=July 9, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210709183052/https://www.nps.gov/ethnography/research/docs/ggsrs_book.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="krio">{{cite web |last1=Opala |first1=Joseph |title=The Gullah: Rice, Slavery, and the Sierra Leone-American Connection |url=https://glc.yale.edu/gullah-rice-slavery-and-sierra-leone-american-connection |website=Yale Macmillan Center Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition |date=March 10, 2015 |publisher=Yale University |access-date=12 September 2021 |archive-date=October 19, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211019041928/https://glc.yale.edu/gullah-rice-slavery-and-sierra-leone-american-connection |url-status=live }}</ref>