Culture of Martinique descended from African slaves brought to work on sugar plantations during the colonial era, white slave owners or from Carib or Kalinago people. Today, the island enjoys a higher standard of living than most other Caribbean countries. The finest French products are easily available, from Chanel fashions to Limoges porcelain. Among young people, studying in France is common. For the French, Martinique has been a vacation hotspot for many years, attracting both the upper class and more budget-conscious travelers. Music contributes a great deal to Martinique's culture. The most popular style is zouk, which originated in Martinique and Guadeloupe by
Languages of the Caribbean can also be observed on Dominica, Saint Vincent, Carriacou, Petite Martinique and Grenada. Asian languages such as Chinese and other Indian languages such as Tamil are spoken by Asian expatriates and their descendents exclusively. In earlier historical times, other Indo-European languages, such as German, could be found in northeastern parts of the Caribbean. Throughout the long multilingual history of the Caribbean continent, Caribbean languages have been subject to phenomena like language contact, language expansion, language shift, and language death. Two examples are the Spanish expansion, in which Spanish-speaking peoples expanded over most of central Caribbean, thereby displacing Arawak speaking peoples