Phillip M. Carter (Scientific American, 6/14/23); Crystal Quintero (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly
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“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 recently published research (by the author of this article), these expressions – along with a host of others – form part of a new English dialect taking shape in South Florida.
This language variety came about through sustained contact between Spanish and English speakers, particularly when speakers translated directly [too literally] from Spanish.
When French collided with English
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Whether English speakers live in Miami or elsewhere, chances are we don’t know where the words we know and use come from.
We’re probably aware that a limited number of words – usually foods, such as “sriracha” or “croissant” – are borrowed from other languages. But borrowed words are far more pervasive than we might think.
They’re all over our English vocabulary: “pajamas” from Hindi (India), “gazelle” from Arabic via French, and “tsunami” from Japanese.
Borrowed words usually come from the minds and mouths of bilingual speakers who end up moving between different cultures and places [called "code-switching"].
This can happen when certain events like war, colonialism, political exile, immigration, or climate change put speakers of different languages into contact with one another.
When the contact takes place over an extended period of time – decades, generations or longer – the structures of the languages in question may begin to influence one another, and the speakers can begin to share each other’s vocabulary.
[Blacks (Moors) ruled England for 800 years then the French for 200 years]
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| "Get down from the car" or "get out of the car"? (Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images) |
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One bilingual confluence famously changed the trajectory of the English language. In 1066, the Norman French, led by William the Conqueror, invaded England in an event now known as the “Norman Conquest.”Soon thereafter, a French-speaking ruling class replaced the English-speaking aristocracy, and for roughly 200 years, the elites of England, including the kings, did their business in French.
English never really caught on with the aristocracy, but since servants and the middle classes needed to communicate with aristocrats – and with people of different classes intermarrying – French words trickled down the class hierarchy and into the language.
During this period, more than 10,000 loanwords from French entered the English language (medium.com), 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, and poetry to name just a few.
Spanish meets English in Miami
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| "Latinx" means Latino/Latina. |
Fast forward to today, where a similar form of language contact involving Spanish and English has been going on in Miami since the end of the Cuban Revolution in 1959.
In the years following the revolution, hundreds of thousands of Cubans left the island nation for South Florida, 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 Latinx (Latina/Latino), and in the large municipalities of Doral and Hialeah, the figure is 80% and 95%, respectively.
Of course, identifying as Latinx 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.
Among this mix are bilinguals. Some are more proficient in Spanish, and others are more skilled English speakers. Together, they navigate the sociolinguistic landscape of South Florida in complex ways, knowing when and with whom to use which language – and when it’s okay to mix them. More: Scientific American
