New language emerging in America has left researchers scratching their heads

Miami, Florida, is one of the most cosmopolitan and bilingual cities in the U.S., with just 25% of the Native English-speaking population, while the rest speak varied languages like Spanish, French, etc. But these days, locals of Miami are using a language that has made researchers scratch their heads. The language is neither Spanish nor English, but a quirky blend of both. Researchers have named this new dialect “Miami English.” A detailed study has been published in English World Wide.

For the past few years, researchers at Florida International University have been observing this new dialect emerging in the crowds of Miami, but it is only now that it has become fully prevalent among locals. The phrase, “She got married to him,” has become “She got married with him.” Miami locals say, “Get down from the car,” instead of “Get out of the car.” And the phrase “I waited in line to pay for my groceries,” has become “I made a line to pay for my groceries.”

“All words, dialects, and languages have a history,” Professor Phillip Carter, Director of the Center for Humanities in an Urban Environment at FIU, told IFL Science. “In Miami, there are many ways of speaking English. 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,” he added. “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.”

According to IFL Science, Miami English involves translating a Spanish phrase into English but keeping the structure of the original phrase, known in linguistics as a calque. Scientific American explains that calques are all around the English language. For instance, when there was no word for the flower “dandelion,” Germans scoured Latin botany books, where it was called dens lionis, or “lion’s tooth.” French people borrowed the concept of “lion’s tooth,” and calqued it “dent de lion.” This is how the English speakers got the word “dandelion.” In Miami, phrases like “bajar del carro” become “get down from the car” instead of the typical American English translation, “get out of the car.” “Tirar una foto,” became “throw a photo” instead of “take a photo.”

“What is remarkable about the calques 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 told IFL Science.

However, Miami English should not be confused with Spanglish, as Carter told NBC News. “The way Spanish and English have intertwined in Miami after the arrival of many Cubans half a century ago has gone beyond what some may call ‘Spanglish and evolved into a new English-language dialect entirely.”