From the University of Maine
to Sea Island, Georgia
A Thread of Pidgin English
the grass on top of my head
 |
| Sea Island, GA |
In 1964, I was finishing my degree in French and taking a course that included exposure to other languages. Pidgin English was the one that captured my imagination, causing me to easily remember its translation—“the grass on top of my head.”
Pidgin is a language invented by groups of people who speak different languages but need to communicate with each other; it has a simple vocabulary, a simple structure, and draws upon the local language. A pidgin was created by the West Africans captured on raiding expeditions in the 17th and 18th centuries and brought to America as plantation slaves in the coastal areas of South Carolina, Georgia, and northern Florida. Because they spoke different languages, they formed a new language that drew on African pidgins as well as English.*
Soon after the Fourth of July 2016, I drove away from Florida for the last time with my destination a town on the southern coast of Georgia. While staying there only several days to leave my car, I explored Rt. 17N, which had nothing to offer me. But Rt. 17S took me to the causeway to Sea Island, where I sat on a beach with thoughts of its surrounding beauty and my good fortune. In truth, Sea Island in the following year would play a role in the thread from my university course.
After my return home in 2017, having again visited Sea Island, I remembered my university course one day and my delight with Pidgin English. Believing that the memory might have been stored for a future use, I began to research this language. On one website for linguistic studies, I found a photo of a ferryboat sign with instructions written in English Pidgin-Creole—causing a thrill as I read the translation, “If you want the ferry to come, strike the gong.”* Reading the words that resembled the language structure of those in my memory confirmed that I had remembered the correct language.
A pidgin might in time become a richer language in vocabulary and structure and be spoken by a larger population. Then it becomes a creole language. The Gulllah Geechee, who live on the Sea Islands of Georgia, speak Sea Island Gullah and Geechee, a creole language.* I realized that a thread about language had spanned fifty-one of my years, creating new historical interest.*
My realization is, “It matters to ask why experiences from many years back are remembered. Upon closer thought, a thread may be discovered that has continued unnoticed until one day it becomes a beckoning invitation.”
* “Sipos Yu Wantem Ferry Yu Kilem Gong.” Photo ©Anders Ryman/Getty Images. https://www.thoughtco.com/pidgin-language-1691626. See Ryman photo here.