The old grandees of Charleston were usually sent to Oxford or Cambridge for an education and English tradition still remains, I fancy, the foundation for what Charleston social life is to-day.  I thought at first that Charlestonians spoke like the English, but later came to the conclusion that there is in the pronunciation of some of them a quality resembling a very faint brogue—­a brogue such as might be possessed by a cultivated Irishman who had moved to England in his boyhood, and had been educated there.  The “vanishing y” of tidewater Virginia is also used by some Charlestonians, I am told, though I do not remember hearing it.

Generalizations on the subject of dialectic peculiarities are dangerous, as I have good reason to know.  Naturally, not all Charlestonians speak alike.  I should say, however, that the first a in the words “Papa” and “Mama” is frequently given a short sound, as a in “hat”; also that many one-syllable words are strung out into two.  For instance, “eight” is heard as “ay-et” ("ay” as in “gray"); “where” as “whey-uh,” or “way-uh,” and “hair” as “hay-uh.”  “Why?” sometimes sounds like “Woi?” Such words as “calm” and “palm” are sometimes given the short a:  “cam” and “pam”—­which, of course, occurs elsewhere, too.  The name “Ralph” is pronounced as “Rafe” (a as in “rate")—­which I believe is Old English; and the names “Saunders” and “Sanders” are pronounced exactly alike, both being called “Sanders.”  Tomatoes are sometimes called “tomatters.”  Two dishes I never heard of before are “Hopping John,” which is rice cooked with peas, and “Limping Kate,” which is some other rice combination.  What we, in the North, call an “ice-cream freezer” becomes in Charleston an “ice-cream churn.”  “Good morning” is the salutation up to three P.M., whereas in other parts of the South “Good evening” is said for the Northern “Good afternoon.”  Charlestonians speak of being “parrot-toed”—­not “pigeon-toed.”  Where, in the North, we would ask a friend, “How are things out your way?” a Charlestonian may inquire, “How are things out your side?” The expression “going out” means to go to St. Cecilia Balls, and I have been told that it is never used in any other way.  That is, if a lady is asked:  “Are you going out this winter?” it means definitely, “Are you going to the St. Cecilia balls?” If you heard it said that some one was “on Mount Pleasant,” you might suppose that Mount Pleasant was an island; but it is not; it is a village on the mainland across the Cooper River.  And what is to me one of the most curious expressions I ever heard is “do don’t,” as when a lady called to her daughter, “Martha, do don’t slam that door again!”

How generally these peculiarities crop out in the speech of Charleston I cannot say.  It occurs to me, however, that, assembled and catalogued in this way, they may create the idea that slovenly English is generally spoken in the city.  If so they give an impression which I should not wish to convey, since Charleston has no more peculiarities of language than New York or Boston, and not nearly so many as a number of other cities.  Cultivated Charlestonians have, moreover, the finest voices I have heard in any American city.