Charleston (South Carolina) talk · Languages in Charleston (South Carolina)
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Languages in Charleston (South Carolina)
Languages in Charleston (South Carolina)
The dialect here varies from standard American English, having a "Southern Coastal Accent" that contains British influences. For those who learned Standard English, some speech may be difficult to comprehend here. Generally speaking, one can easily get by with Standard American or British English, though. The inhabitants of Charleston are, to a large degree, transient (due to several military installations, port labor, rail labor, and other factors), and therefore many other languages are inherent in a minority role.
A minority dialect spoken here is Gullah, a dialect of English almost incomprehensible to most English Speakers. If you are familiar with "Porgy and Bess", you are familiar with Gullah. Gullah has West-African influences mixed with pidjin French and English. The dialect originated around John's Island. If you travel south of the city (to the islands, or towards Ravenel), the dialect becomes somewhat more prevalent (although still in a minority context).
Alternate languages include Spanish and Portuguese, brought to the city and its outskirts by its large Latin American population. One may encounter "Spanglish" here, which is an odd combination of Spanish and English.
Place names in and around Charleston are often very Americanized versions of French (Lagare Street, for example, is pronounced luh-GREE) or other languages.
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Charleston (South Carolina) Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.