Ep13: Guinea Talk: Gloucester County's Unique Dialect

Title: Languaging in Hampton Roads

Episode 13: Guinea Talk: Gloucester County’s Unique Dialect

Hosts: Jill Winkowski and Prue Salasky

Date: Feb 2, 2025

Length: 39:44

Publication Frequency: Fourth Friday (approx) of each month

Take a ride with us--to Guinea Neck!

Nestled in the marshland of Gloucester County, Virginia, is Guinea Neck, where the local community has made their living off the water for centuries. Traditionally, the lifestyle of Guinea has been comprised of long hours on the water and a tight knit community, the ideal situation for the development of a unique language variation.

Although receding, the Guinea dialect is well known in the Gloucester area. We tapped into oral histories to try to understand the unique features of their dialect. In this episode, we introduce you to four Guinea watermen, born and raised in the early to mid-twentieth century. We take account of their stories of living and working on the water, while walking through the stages of their lives and experiences.

Along the way we talk with linguist, Dr. Bridget Anderson at Old Dominion University. Dr. Anderson is the founder of the Tidewater Voices oral history project (see info below).  Dr. Anderson talks with us about how to listen for differences in the vowels and other features of the Tidewater and Guinea variations and emphasizes the importance of deeper, broader study to understand the distinct variations.

We also talk with Carlene Klein who, with two other students of Dr. Anderson, through a yearlong ethnographic process, interviewed a number of the Guinea watermen.

The Guinea watermen featured in this episode share stories of growing up in the remote marshes of Guines, of living with their close family connections, of learning the ropes and starting work on the water at young ages, and of the joy of being on the water.

Tidewater Voices is housed at ODU Digital Commons and is available to the public for research. There are 22 Guinea oral histories in the collection. You can find them here: https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/tidewatervoices_gloucester/  Look for the Guinea subheading.

 If you like languagingHR episodes and want to hear more about how we created the episodes for 2024, get a behind this scenes tour by listening to our presentation to the National Museum of Language: https://languagemuseum.org/past-events/

languagingHR was also featured in The Virginia Pilot in December. Check it out: https://www.pilotonline.com/2024/12/24/says-who-linguists-look-at-tidewater-dialect-and-culture-in-podcast/

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