Editing Gullah language (section)

==Turner's research==
In the 1930s and 1940s, the [[linguist]] [[Lorenzo Dow Turner]] did a seminal study of the language based on field research in rural communities in coastal South Carolina and Georgia.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The University of Chicago Magazine: Features |url=https://magazine.uchicago.edu/1012/features/legacy.shtml |access-date=2022-03-25 |website=magazine.uchicago.edu |archive-date=November 8, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211108175911/http://magazine.uchicago.edu/1012/features/legacy.shtml |url-status=live }}</ref> Turner found that Gullah is strongly influenced by African languages in its phonology, vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, and semantics. Turner identified over 300 [[loanword]]s from various [[languages of Africa]] in Gullah and almost 4,000 African personal names used by Gullah people. He also found Gullahs living in remote seaside settlements who could recite songs and story fragments and do simple counting in the [[Mende language|Mende]], [[Vai language|Vai]], and [[Fula language|Fulani]] languages of West Africa.<ref>{{cite web |title=Photo: Language and Storytelling Southern Style |url=https://www.smithsonianjourneys.org/blogs/blog/2010/01/26/photo-language-and-storytelling-southern-style/ |website=Smithsonian Journeys |publisher=Smithsonian Institution |access-date=30 November 2023}}</ref>

In 1949, Turner published his findings in a classic work called ''Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect'' ({{ISBN|9781570034527}}). The fourth edition of the book was reprinted with a new introduction in 2002.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Africanisms in the Gullah dialect / / Lorenzo D. Turner; with a new introduction by Katherine Wyly Mille and Michael B. Montgomery. |url=https://siris-libraries.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?menu=search&term=39088010291953&index=BC |access-date=2023-12-25 |website=siris-libraries.si.edu}}</ref>

Before Turner's work, mainstream scholars viewed Gullah speech as substandard English, a hodgepodge of mispronounced words and corrupted grammar, which uneducated black people developed in their efforts to copy the speech of their English, Irish, Scottish and French [[Huguenot]] slave owners.<ref name="Mille and Montgomery">Mill and Montgomery, "Introduction to Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect by Lorenzo Turner", xix–xxiv, Gonzales, ''The Black Border: Gullah Stories of the Carolina Coast'', p. 10.<br /></ref>

Turner's study was so well researched and detailed in its evidence of African influences in Gullah that some academics soon changed their minds. But his book primarily "elicited praise but not emulation."<ref>{{Cite book |date=1975 |title=Gullah |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20006641 |series=Oceanic Linguistics Special Publications |pages=468–480 |publisher=University of Hawai'i Press |jstor=20006641 |issn=0078-3188}}</ref> Over time, other scholars began to take interest in the language and culture and start developing further research on Gullah language and culture.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Campbell |first=Emory S. |date=2011 |title=Gullah Geechee Culture: Respected, Understood and Striving: Sixty Years after Lorenzo Dow Turner's Masterpiece, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5816/blackscholar.41.1.0077 |journal=The Black Scholar |volume=41 |issue=1 |pages=77–84 |doi=10.5816/blackscholar.41.1.0077 |jstor=10.5816/blackscholar.41.1.0077 |s2cid=147596677 |issn=0006-4246|url-access=subscription }}</ref>