Posted on 02/03/2024 3:30:16 AM PST by Libloather
The fusion of Latin and Anglo-American cultures in South Florida in the latter half of the 20th century has created a new dialect, linguists say.
Known as Miami English, the increasingly popular parlance has its roots back in the 1950s, when Cubans began moving to the region en masse.
One of the country’s most bilingual cities today - and beyond that, home to many different Spanish dialects - research has shown that Miamians are finding a new way to engage with English, not unlike immigrant groups in other parts of the United States throughout modern history.
“In Miami, there are many ways of speaking English,” Phillip M. Carter, Director of the Center for Humanities in an Urban Environment at the Florida International University, told IFL Science.
“The variety we have been studying for the past 10 years or so is the main language variety of people born in South Florida in Latinx-majority communities. The variety is characterized by some unique but ultimately minor pronunciations, some minor grammatical differences, and word differences, which are influenced by the longstanding presence of Spanish in South Florida,” he said.
Miami English isn’t to be confused with Spanglish - it’s English, crammed with English phrases lifted directly from the literal Spanish, something known as a calque. And increasingly, everyone in Miami is using them - no matter where their families hail from, Indy100.com reported.
“What is remarkable about them is that we found they were not only used in the speech of immigrants - folks who are leaning on their first language Spanish as they navigate the acquisition of English - but also among their children, who learned English as their co-first language,” Carter said.
And calques are nothing new to the language...
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
You are correct!
The left’s mission in life is to upend the status quo.
Fixing what ain’t broken is their expertise, and inevitably succeed in breaking what wasn’t broken.
They used to call it Spanglish. (I typed Spanglish and it didn’t register as wrong so the word is in our vocabulary).
A few of these types of markers from many immigrant groups make it into the host language; others become extinguished, or are characterized as folklore. My grandparents, both born here from immigrants, used traces of Irish and Scottish.
As one example, the great Scottish migration to the U.S. in the 1840s inserted the letter "a" before a verb to signify the immediate future, or that you are presently doing the act: "I'm a-going to the house." In today's vernacular, we would say, "I'm going to go to the house" or "I'm going to the house right now." You can hear this usage in old-time songs from the colonial to Civil War era.
It is exactly what I thought of when seeing the title of the article.
Because the people who invented it and who teach and revere its greatest writers speak it so much better than we do. Even casual chats with Brits on a street corner are full of wit and articulation.
I'm not talking about decyphering the regional accents or temporary idioms, but the compound sentences and verb tenses and sheer fluency of great English speakers. Listen to Margaret Thatcher to the UK House of Lords, Nigel Farage to the European Union parliament or Boris Johnson giving a talk about Western Civ, and feel bested.
Italian-American neighborhoods of New York, New Jersy and Philly have the same phenomenon—you got a taste of it in The Sopranos. Garrison Keillor made many linguistic references to the Scandanavian culture of the upper Midwest in his Lake Woebegon programs (before he got cancelled by #MeToo). Some of the funniest send-ups of local cultures were SNL's imitations of Irish Bostonians with Amy Poehler and Jimmy Fallon, Chicago Bears fans with Chris Farley and Bob Smigel, and "The Californians" with Fred Armisen, Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig.
“I’m not talking about decyphering the regional accents or temporary idioms”
I was.
I still remember my grandmother. who lived in Florida, complaining about all the Cubans there, fleeing Castro back in 1959.
Down South we say, “I’m fixin’ to go to the house.”
I thought that too.
Interestingly, my girlfriend from Philippines uses some of these same constructions (heavy Spanish influence there).
That may well be, but during the aftermath of the great Scottish migration to the Appalachias and southeast, y'all would have said, "I'm a-fixin' to go to the house."
“Government Tagalog is way different from Ilocano or other Visaya dialects.”
My GF and her family are from the south and central: Davao and Cebu City. I can’t understand Tagalog but she has taught me all of 3 or 4 words!
And she taught me how to pronounce “Tagalog”, in English! (Emphasis on second syllable).
Um ... okay ... Felicidades, Alex y José.
Those cuban girls love it when a gringo flirts with them in Spanish.
“Those cuban girls love it when a gringo flirts with them in Spanish.”
Like when some Norte romantically whispers, “Cuanto por la noche?”
A lot of the phrasing involves the use of pronouns, which is very quirky in many languages. I’m sure I say things in Spanish that sound similar to the phrases the article mentions in English.
My favorite speech mannerism of hers is “make ready” where I would say “get ready” or “get dressed”. Another one is “I’m going to fix the bedroom” where I would say “pick up the bedroom” or “clean up the mess”.
“Haz listo.” My father would say “make ready,” and he was a native of Missouri, so you just never know.
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