Miami English: Unique ‘Only In Dade' dialect emerging in South Florida, FIU study finds

A new dialect specific to South Florida has emerged, containing calques from the Spanish language, NBC6’s Heather Walker reports.

[@Diego-lt4wm]

So it's English with Spanish logic

[@tc2334]

Pretty much

[@aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa790]

Haven't lived in Florida for years but "married with" and "meat" sound familiar.

[@winsomepickett7694]

I was hoping that they'd touch on unique pronunciations in this dialect. I noticed the reporter pronounced "the professor" as "the bravaaasser."

[@crazy_pyromaniac]

I (from south florida) only just started noticing that our pronunciations are different today! I had just thought of myself as using a "proper American accent" and a more "laid back accent", but now I realize that my "laid back accent" is the south florida accent!

[@clevernickname2906]

My ex was from San Antonio and his family used odd terms. “Turn off the candle” “get off the car”

[@hiphipjorge5755]

Ive said Get Down from the car without thinking about it...

[@Diego-lt4wm]

Beautiful haha

[@Tanya-el8ix]

I also turn off the candle and even pass the vacuum lol

[@matthewleiter52]

Yup my wife is Latina and she says this stuff all the time. Tried to correct it but you can't.

[@juancarlosdominguez9998]

wow....could it be what is called "spanglish"? I'm watching in Havana Cuba. hugs to all the viewers and staff of NBC 6!

[@NoLucha]

It's influenced by Spanglish and Spanish pronunciations, but it's not Spanglish. If it was Spanglish there would be more "code switching" I think, which means changing between two or more languages in conversation. I codeswitch a lot here in California with my immediate family. My parents are from Mexico.

[@runningriot7963]

It's different, Spanglish is when you mix Spanish and English words/phrases in a conversation. This dialect is completely in English, by directly translating Spanish phrases.

[@thekingofmoney2000]

Spanglish is when you mix English and Spanish together, it’s not the same thing.

[@moshesierra6849]

My English friends love the miami dialect

[@brendaizquierdo5695]

Where do u make english friends in Miami?!

[@TastyGuava]

@@brendaizquierdo5695 I mean, Miami Beach full of them more like SoBe

[@brendaizquierdo5695]

@@TastyGuava can u give me a bar or street name?

[@frankypadilla5579]

@@brendaizquierdo5695club mango and wet willies

[@iafigueroa91]

Miami english or Cuban-American English?

[@JohnnyRanks-s7z]

Cuban American

[@eve3363]

Exactly

[@jb47vintage]

This isn't limited to Miami. At one point in my life I had a lot of Mexican friends and acquaintances. They spoke English well but they used the calques, the word-for-word translations, occasionally. I think this can occur with anyone speaking a second language. As long as the basic idea gets communicated, it works, and in an area with a high concentration of people who speak 2 languages, you can get the new dialect.

[@VILJL]

Beef or meat empanadas, it doesn't make any difference. Most of them are going to order them in Spanish, like "empanada de carne" or "de pollo" "queso" "guayaba."

[@AvidDiving]

Dude this is exactly what I was thinking. What trash place are u gonna go to to buy empandas that doesn't have some lady there that's doesn't speak Spanish. If your empanada place only does English your likely settling for a very sub standard empanadas.

[@VILJL]

@@AvidDiving In today's Miami-Dade County, one does not have to speak English at all. Everything can be done in Spanish. I studied here from what was called at the time "Junior High School" (grades 7-8-9) then High School, Junior College and University, and now I always start every conversation in Spanish and I rarely have to switch to English.

[@AvidDiving]

@@VILJL Exactly. the food taste better when your taste buds have exercised there Spanish muscles.

[@karenhall7222]

50-60 years ago this dialect came out- they say at the end. I KNEW IT! lol. When my American fiancé said "there's a new spanglish dialect." I was like "new??" lolllllll. Also the world is connected. Can't be just in Florida if I got mad family in Florida coming to visit me in nyc. I am trying to imagine what they say that I dont and I cant think of it. Nonetheless some more accepted valid way for me to explain to my fiancé about the way I speak and why. I want him to deeply get it

[@NoLucha]

the way that second from the left person says "we have hear it tho", the "tho" sounded very spanglish

[@DaveKaramazov]

Here's another one I keep encountering in Miami: Instead of pronouncing "button" and "bitten" as "butt'n" and "bitt'n," many Miamians pronounce the double-t part like "butter" or "better." The glottal stop in "button" and "bitten" are eliminated. (They pronounce "button" exactly like "butter," except for the change in the final consonant.)

[@tc2334]

Yeah...because that glottal stop isn't in Spanish, so they don't use it as often in English.

[@DaveKaramazov]

@@tc2334 good point. I'm ethnically Cuban, now living in Miami. But my accent is closer to middle America, probably because we moved all over the eastern seaboard when I was growing up.

[@tc2334]

@@DaveKaramazov I was born and raised in Miami. I learned Spanish and still speak it to this day, but I'm not Hispanic. My accent is closer to middle America as well, but I think it's because I learned another language in school for eight years, so I was always constantly aware of how I sounded in either language. Now, I'm an English teacher, so I'm even more aware. haha

[@giddycadet]

"you got us there, yeah" lmao

[@TonyLang1984]

Same thing with El Paso, TX…the Southwest in general.

[@icesco1845]

I’ve spoke that dialect even when I lived in Miami back in the late 80’s to early 90’s , people made fun of me because of it when I moved to Puerto Rico and met friends from other parts of the US

[@gustavoaguirre4628]

Que Bola what balls

[@willowwillow1748]

Its more like broken English is all. I was born and raised in Miami since the 70s.

[@cienfuegos8155]

I think "broken" English is what the first generation of Spanish-speaking immigrants spoke. Later generations who have already assimilated and speak English as a first language (but with heavy Spanish influence), are speaking something else: a dialect

[@DyingToLive12]

Never heard of it and ima Rican diwn here!! 😮 I gotta get out more geez!!

[@bethhollins3556]

Legitimated!!

[@rajvo7406]

So says the professor

[@mariapazcastro2737]

Every Latino kid that grew up in an English speaking country speaks this dialect

[@hiphipjorge5755]

Adding "or no?" When you ask someone a question Saying "get down from the car" Using double negatives "you don't do nothing" Latinos in Vegas use these too

[@Billylamar]

Interesting

[@BellaFirenze]

No one says "put down from the car."

[@solntom]

Not "put down." It's get down from the car," as a command, "get out of the car!"

[@BellaFirenze]

You have the brain of the last raisin in the box. I wasn't referring to anything anyone says in this report. The so-called expert mentioned that in another report. ¿Por qué te metes en asuntos de los cuales no sabes nada? Mentecato. @@solntom

[@AvidDiving]

De pinga

[@polarvortex6601]

LOOOL

[@alexskatit4188]

Oh please.....that is not a dialect.

[@iekoom]

It’s all Greek to me.

[@MarkPolo-su1hc]

Wat dey do! Straight up,chico dialect gotta love my Miami heads! 305 dale!

[@Distress.]

This isnt really showing the dialect well. Its all in the enunciation in words, the word like being the best example.

[@winsomepickett7694]

What do you mean by the pronunciation of the word 'like'?

[@Distress.]

@@winsomepickett7694 It's hard to explain it's all in the Ls and in the word Like we stretch out the I Liiiike.

[@winsomepickett7694]

See, now the "lllllike" I am well familiar with --and I would say that's a feature of almost all regions of Spanish-inflected English. But occasionally I hear other things from Miami speakers that I don't think I've heard before. @@Distress.

[@GumbarLimbits]

language changes over time? no way

[@faizet2]

Philip M. Carter needs his ears 👂 pinned back real quick!

[@angelbxaquarist7445]

What they’re speaking about is what Latino community all around America speak like… it sounds like my folks in NY

[@frankypadilla5579]

Viva Fidel

[@theoriginalwaterbaby]

Yeah, that's just Spanglish. Not a Florida-specific dialect. 🙄

[@armandobronca2758]

That's more like improper English 😂

[@iafigueroa91]

Exactly I don't speak like that and I was born and raised in Miami.

[@xavierdomenico]

No accent is ‘improper’

[@nfrankiksa4596]

@@xavierdomenico yeah it is, what are you on?

[@NoLucha]

Everyone has accents, language is always changing. If you come to the central valley of California, you'll hear what sounds like faint southern accents, but it happened because of the dustbowl and th Great Depression. A lot of people from Oklahoma came to the Central Valley and it influenced how people spoke. There is no exact "right way" there is just "common way" and that "common way" is not common everywhere. Language is very fluid and always changing.@@nfrankiksa4596

[@Don.Camilo]

Daleeee

[@wademitchell3817]

¡La inflación ha bajado! ¡Las acciones están en su punto más alto! ¡El desempleo está en su nivel más bajo en 50 años! ¡La producción de petróleo de Estados Unidos está en su punto más alto de todos los tiempos!

[@ronaldcole7415]

The old French, German, Dutch, Irish, Chinese and especially the Italians call this, "not being able to speak English because you're lazy." Every body else learns to speak proper English, what's their problem? It's called LAZY. ~ Message from the Italians.

[@julian75hall]

Broken English ,accented English, twisted English, improper English. This all stem from the environment down there in South Florida when it comes to languages broken English language,broken Spanish language for the mass mix with a little English and Spanish language you are going to this form of twisted language .

[@aldorodriguez404]

As Cubans make miami more illiterate..🤣

[@AmericanBoy88]

Speak clear English I only know regular English and I've lived in the United States my whole entire life born as United States citizen😊

[@itsjustneverenough533]

Is really an American thing or just a result of constant immigration? I only as due to the thumbnail🙄

[@tuscanlab]

You’re using it and don’t realize it 😅 It’s “is it really….”

[@brendaacosta5885]

Spanglish 🤙

[@DdDd-pk4pu]

🤦‍♂️🙄 TAKE OVER LOL😂

[@user-hh4hc2lt6e]

this was pretty dumb

[@SeniorMoostacho]

Stop with this crap. There is NO new language in the USA. Slang, broken English, mixed with Spanish is gibberish only a local of that place would use. How about the use of Hawaiian Pidgin.....🤔 I'm getting really tired of the Constant dogging of America and it being English speaking, which it is. Embrace the Love of the Very Large and Diverse use of words and meanings of English. You can do it.

[@thekingofmoney2000]

It sounds uneducated.

[@eve3363]

Not speaking English is not a dialect.

[@nfrankiksa4596]

this! I speak Spanish and I can tell they're just directly translating from Spanish that's all. Not a dialect just wrong prepositions lmao

[@robertofernandez7773]

Great!!! Now, we don't even speak proper English.

[@NoLucha]

hahaha the proper English we speak today was not proper before, language is constantly in flux. If we read something that was written in English 500 years ago, and listen to how people speak today... you would find it would be very different. Just got back 50 years ago and you'll see slight differences.

[@gustavoaguirre4628]

Que Bola what balls