Page "Gullah language" Paragraph 10

Before Lorenzo 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.

But Turner's study was so well researched and detailed in its evidence of African influences in Gullah that academics soon reversed course.

After Turner's book was published in 1949, scholars began coming to the Gullah region regularly to study African influences in Gullah language and culture.