SWU students celebrate Gullah translation
Southern Wesleyan University representatives at the Gullah New Testament Celebration, from left are, front row, student Amanda Link, admissions counselor Jenny Walters, and students Kristyn Dees and Amber May. On the back row are students Reggie Smith and Melissa Wilcox, English professor Dr. Betty Mealy, Modern Languages Division Chair Dr. Laura Black and her husband Ron Black, and student Summer Reubert.
The New Testament of the Bible is now available in the Gullah language.
Southern Wesleyan University students are celebrating the recent translation by learning more about the coastal language.
Students from Southern Wesleyan University’s Teaching English as a Foreign Language class, attended the dedication of the Gullah New Testament at Wycliffe Bible Translators’ JAARS facility in Waxhaw, N.C., on Nov. 5. Activities, including demonstrations of Gullah basket weaving and rice planting, Gullah cultural lectures and music programs featuring De Gullah Singers began with a service of dedication of the entire New Testament in the Gullah language.
“Gullah was thought to be a broken language, but Bible translation brought respect to the language,” said Dr. Emory Campbell, a Gullah. Campbell is the former director of the Penn Center, the first school in the South for freed slaves.
The language developed from West Africans brought to the Atlantic seacoast as slaves.