The communication languages in Cartagena de Indias
Spanish is the used language in Cartagena, but this Spanish is different from the north Latin countries as well as Spain because people from Cartagena “eat their words”. Otherwise, certain letters in their words aren’t pronounced so they speak “costeno”, so Caribbean coast. People from the inside of the country have a Spanish easier to understand.
The communication in English is not really used
although the publicity saying that people speak English, in fact
it’s not true. Few taxi drivers can say a word in English even
if the majority of their customers are stranger tourists. Even
if hotels are called 5 stars, English is hard to find although a
5 star hotel must have at least three languages available for
customers.
It’s desirable to have a small dictionary if you go through the
city in order to be understandable or understand people from
Cartagena.