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[I wrote this piece more than a year and a half ago, but neglected to post it because I was in the midst of a long run.  Nonetheless, it's still relevant and interesting, so I'm going ahead to post it now.]

"Linguists have identified a new English dialect that’s emerging in South Florida", by Phillip M. Carter in The Conversation (6/12/23)

Beginning sentences:

“We got down from the car and went inside.”

“I made the line to pay for groceries.”

“He made a party to celebrate his son’s birthday.”

These phrases might sound off to the ears of most English-speaking Americans.

In Miami, however, they’ve become part of the local parlance.

According to my recently published research, these expressions – along with a host of others – form part of a new dialect taking shape in South Florida.

This language variety came about through sustained contact between Spanish and English speakers, particularly when speakers translated directly from Spanish.

The article, which is fairly long, is divided into several sections.

"When French collided with English", is a fairly general introduction to what happens when languages come into sustained contact, such as the centuries after the Norman Conquest of 1066.

During this period, more than 10,000 loanwords from French entered the English language, mostly in domains where the aristocracy held sway: the arts, military, medicine, law and religion. Words that today seem basic, even fundamental, to English vocabulary were, just 800 years ago, borrowed from French: prince, government, administer, liberty, court, prayer, judge, justice, literature, music, poetry, to name just a few.

Next comes Spanish meets English in Miami".  In it, Carter explains the historical circumstances for the massive influx of Spanish speakers since Cuban Revolution of 1959, "setting the stage for what would become one of the most important linguistic convergences in all of the Americas."

Today, the vast majority of the population is bilingual. In 2010, more than 65% of the population of Miami-Dade County identified as Hispanic or Latina/o, and in the large municipalities of Doral and Hialeah, the figure is 80% and 95%, respectively.

Of course, identifying as Latina/o is not synonymous with speaking Spanish, and language loss has occurred among second- and third-generation Cuban Americans. But the point is that there is a lot of Spanish – and a lot of English – being spoken in Miami.

Then we have "A new lingo emerges", in which Carter documents several types of Spanish-origin calques in the English spoken in South Florida, e.g., “literal lexical calques,” a direct, word-for-word translation.

For example, we found people to use expressions such as “get down from the car” instead of “get out of the car.” This is based on the Spanish phrase “bajar del carro,” which translates, for speakers outside of Miami, as “get out of the car.” But “bajar” means “to get down,” so it makes sense that many Miamians think of “exiting” a car in terms of “getting down” and not “getting out.”

…

We also found “semantic calques,” or loan translations of meaning. In Spanish, “carne,” which translates as “meat,” can refer to both all meat, or to beef, a specific kind of meat. We discovered local speakers saying “meat” to refer specifically to “beef” – as in, “I’ll have one meat empanada and two chicken empanadas.”

And then there were “phonetic calques,” or the translation of certain sounds.

“Thanks God,” a type of loan translation from “gracias a Dios,” is common in Miami. In this case, speakers analogize the “s” sound at the end of “gracias” and apply it to the English form.

Finally, there is "The Miami-born adopt the calques".

We found that some expressions were used only among the immigrant generation – for example, “throw a photo,” from “tirar una foto,” as a variation of “take a photo.”

But other expressions were used among the Miami-born, a group who may be bilingual but speak English as their primary language.

Considering the large percentage of Spanish immigrants, I am surprised that more people don't speak Spanish as their first language or that Spanish has not had an even greater impact on English than it actually has.  But I am reminded of another fact about Romance language in the Americas that I learned just last week, viz., although almost 60% of all Argentinians have at least partial Italian ethnic heritage, Italian language nationally does not play a key role.

 

Selected readings

• "Mi experiencia como Team Leader de compras vecinales" (6/14/22)
• "Spanglish" (4/4/04)
• "The Mock Spanglish of @ElBloombito" (8/29/11)

[Thanks to June Teufel Dreyer, who has lived in Miami for more than four decades, but says she has never heard any of these new South Florida Spanglish expressions.  A different part of Miami.]

January 21, 2025 @ 9:31 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Borrowing, Dialects, Lexicon and lexicography, Translation

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