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ISLAND JARGON

Barbadians have a lively, colourful way of expressing themselves. It's mixture of local idiom with a bit of British and African influence. The dialect may seem like another language when you first arrive, but if you ask locals to speak slowly you will catch on without much problem.

A few tips about the dialect. Local phrasing and usage often involves 'short cuts' in speech, the most common and obvious of this is clipping off the last consonant of words. 'Helping' verbs are rarely used, so you would hardly hear "I am going". Instead you would hear "I gone, hear?"

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