Charleston Dialects

I often have guests from other parts of the country who are surprised that I don’t speak like Forrest Gump, and tell me, “Southerners speak with a drawl”. To that I respond that the South is comprised of 11 states covering more than 1 million square miles, and that people from west Texas, for example, have no more common lingual traits with Charlestonians than they do with folks from Wisconsin. As for the drawl, that kind of speaking is more common to southern Indiana than Charleston, so it really isn’t so much Southern as it is country (take Larry Bird for instance). And by the way, Tom Hanks’ accent in Forrest Gump was a far-fetched rendition – Hanks is a Californian who obviously hasn’t been around many Southerners. I’ve also thought it interesting that people talk about Southern accents as unusual, but not “Northern accents”. To my ear, there are very pronounced accents from other regions as well.
Charlestonians do not drawl, but we do have distinguishable dialects that set us apart. We have a very diverse mix of language backgrounds with various European and African influences, and many areas that were so isolated for so long that certain dialects became even more unique. To my ear, there are three basic dialects that are spoken by old Charleston families. There is the “Tidewater accent” of those like me whose English was spoken among the more aristocratic families (not mine, we were a family of French artists and teachers who learned to speak this way from associating with the “blue bloods” when we emigrated here). This dialect sounds to many people like the English spoken in Canada, with pronounced emphasis on words such as “house” and “about”, and earlier generations still added a “y” sound to certain words such as “cyar” for an automobile and “gyarden” for the place you grow flowers.
Another common dialect was a brogue that came from the large Scottish, Irish and north country English who settled here. Their way of speaking sounds very much like what you might here in Donegal or Edinborough, as they give many words a double-syllable or compress the vowel sounds. The word “gate” sounds more like “gehyet”, “boat” like “bowat” and “door” like “dowah”. Vowels are compressed as “line” sounds like “loyn”, “fish” like “fush” and “to” like “toe”.
The most unusual Charleston-area dialect is Gullah, a name that has a questionable origin but most likely comes from the Gola tribe of West Africa. Large numbers of West Africans were brought to coastal islands as slaves, where they learned English by mimicking overseers. Over the years in these remote places with little English-speaking influence, Gullah transformed into what many consider a language of its own.
It is distinguished by metaphorical phrases such as “ee foot in ee han’”, meaning “his foot is in his hand” referring to the image of a rabbit running so fast that his back foot seems to rest in his front paw. This term simply means “he’s fast”. Gullah words include African terms such as “yam” and “gumbo”, but most of it is a pigeon-English as words were corrupted by sound, and terms such as “you are” became “onna”, “there” became “de-dey”, “yent” became “are not” and certain “th” and “r” sounds were dropped altogether.
Perhaps the best way to explain how Gullah sounds is the great story told by the late Dick Reeves, who made his life’s work the preservation of Gullah. He told the tale of a man from up North who came South looking for a place to hunt deer and came across a Gullah-speaking man, and asked him if deer were in the vicinity to hunt. The Gullah-speaker shook his head knowing well how deer were never around when you wanted them to be, and only showed when you didn’t want them, so he replied by saying, “No suh, wen onna de-dey, de deh de no deh deh, but onna yent deh, de deh, den dey deh.”
Simply translated, this means, “no sir, when you’re there, the deer are not there, but when you’re not there, the deer, then they’re there.”

Castle Pinckney

Castle Pinckney is a much more visible site in Charleston Harbor today, thanks to recent trimming of trees and weeds that had obscured the curious foritification for many years. The original 1808 design was created by Col. Jonathan Williams, who was Chief Superintendent of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers under president Thomas Jefferson. Williams planned a series of twin-tiered, elliptical fortresses in a castle-like look to guard the Atlantic coast. Two other castle fortresses were built in New York Harbor, with the Charleston version named after Constitution signer Charleston Cotesworth Pinckney.
Castle Pinckney was built on a spit of land called Shutes Folly, located inside the harbor. It’s position so close to the Charleston peninsula quickly made the fort obsolete, as more the powerful cannons of the 1820’s made it necessary to build a fort more distant from the city to keep ships at bay, and thus Fort Sumter was conceived. The only shots fired from Castle Pinckney were military salutes during garrison duty in the early 19th century. Still a U.S. installation in 1860, Castle Pinckney was seized by seceding South Carolinians, and was manned with guns during the Civil War. The only significant use it served during that conflict was as a holding area for Union prisoners in the early days of the war before Confederate prison camps were created. In the summer of 1861 after the first battle of Manassas, Union “Zoave” captives from New York were held at Castle Pinckney, which had barracks decorated with signs that read “Hotel de Zoave” and “Musical Hall 444 Broadway.”
The fort was decommissioned as a military location after the Civil War and served as a harbor channel lighthouse and day marker until 1951, when it was manned by abandoned. Today, the tiny old castle is sunken into surrounding mud, but at least one Dahlgren cannon from the Civil War lies buried within. The property was recently deeded to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who have cleaned up year so neglect, and plan to erect a flagpole to display the Second National flag of the Confederacy, the “Stainless Banner” in 2012.

Why Windows Wavy?

I am often asked why the old panes of glass on Charleston’s historic buildings have a ripple or wavy texture. The answer comes from the old methods of making window panes. Prior to the 1830’s, glass was made by hand, as individual artisans created windows with a simple, rustic process. The basic ingredients of soda and lime were baked into a molten mass called a “crown”, which was then attached to a metal pole called a pontil. The pontil was mounted on hand-powered gears to spin the molten mass at high speeds, spreading the still-liquid glass by centrifugal force into wide, thin circles that were cooled and cut into individual panes. This became universally-known as Crown Glass.
The spinning motion itself created the wavy ripple that characterized old glass, and also made certain imperfections. Where the spinning began at the pontil attachment had larger ripples and became known as the “bulls eye”. Air pockets were common as the shape of the molten glass change with exposure to sudden cooling. Both the bulls eye and air pockets were still cut into functional panes, typically mounted in lesser-viewed windows. One such window is on the North side of St. Michael’s church, where the imperfect panes are clearly visible.
Another limitation of the old Crown glass-making was that the thin sheets became more brittle as larger sections were cut, leading to the preponderance of colonial “nine-over-nine” windows that feature so many individual panes.

Charleston Social Traditions

Charleston is considered to be among the most well-dressed and best-mannered cities in America, and this is a tradition that has largely been held sacred in the many historic societies that grace the old city.
One of the most famed societies is the St. Cecilia Society, created in 1762 and named for the patron saint of music. The old society includes Charleston’s most elite families, and the membership is limited only to those who are directly descended from the 18th century organization. The St. Cecilia’s annual ball is a white-tie and tails/long gown affair in which dinner is served at midnight, followed by hours of formal dancing.
Two benevolent societies, the 1737 South Carolina Society and the 1748 St. Andrews Society, share the same hall at 70 Meeting Street. South Carolina Society Hall was built by descendants of French Huguenots in the early 1800’s, and they offered to share the roof with their Scottish Presbyterians brethren after fired claimed the old St. Andrews Society hall on Broad Street in 1861. The building features atop its grand portico, the South Carolina Society motto “posteritati”, meaning “future generations”, with the symbol of a hand planting a seed. The seed that is largely planted for future generations today is the formal dance party, as dozens of “debutante” parties are held at the hall each Fall in which young women are formally introduced to society. There are also the annual Cotillion dances for younger children, who learn the manners and dress of genteel society.
The Deutsche Freundlische Gesellschaft, Societe’ Francaise and the Hibernian Society are all based on national German, French and Irish origins, and all have very honored traditions. Perhaps the most well-known and honored is the St. Patrick’s Day parade of the Hibernians, who have marched in their green garb since the mid 19th century.
Other societies with significant traditions include the Brown Fellowship Society, founded by Charleston’s free blacks in 1794; the New England Society, founded in 1819 by such newcomers to the city as Massachusetts native Samuel Finley Breese Morse, who created the famous Morse Code.
Some of the old societies and traditions have died over the years, such as the spirited meetings of the Philomathean Society of the early 19th century, which met in Stoll’s Alley and was dedicated to gathering gentlemen to debate intellectual issues of the day.
Most interesting of all names was the satirical Ugly Club, founded in the aftermath of the American Revolution by elite Charlestonians who met at the old Williams Tavern on Tradd Street to exchange eloquent and humorous insults. Their colorful salutation, read at the beginning of each meeting was :
“ Ugly mortals, hither haste, Enjoy our mirth, enjoy our feast,
Bring noses crooked, noses hooked,
Noses swollen, noses crooked,
But each must bring and homest heart,
Or bear this sentence – hence depart.