Script for Podcast on Miami English
[intro music from Will Smith’s Miami]
Narrator
Miami. The city of glitter and glamour, grit and grim. The capital of Latin
America. And the home to Miami English.
Miami English first emerged in the 1960s and '70s with the arrival of
Cuban immigrants and intensified in the '80s with immigrants from not
just Cuba, but Argentina, Venezuela and elsewhere in Latin America.
Today, according to the US Census Bureau, 58.5 percent of Miami-Dade
county's 2.4 million residents speak Spanish. English-only speakers make
up 27.2 percent of the county's residents. In the Cuban-dominated city of
Hialeah and in the Miami neighborhood of Little Havana, 94 percent of
residents identified themselves as Hispanic.
[amplify music “Welcome to Miami / Bienvinedo a Miami”]
Narrator
Here, a unique dialect of English is spoken. Miami English. South Florida
is about as far south as you can get, but the Miami accent is by no means a
Southern drawl. It’s not a Spanish accent, either, and it’s definitely not the
same as Spanglish.
So, what exactly is Miami English? Where did it come from? What are its
features? And how can we identify it?
We went to Florida International University Linguistics Professor Dr.
Mehmet Yavas with our questions.
[intro clip from Yavas]
Narrator
We’ll get back to that in a moment. First, we have to look at a few
definitions.
In English, the term dialect sometimes carries negative connotations
associated with nonstandard varieties, such as Southern English or African
American English. In linguistics, however, a dialect is any variety of
language spoken by a group of people that is characterized by differences
from other varieties of the same language. In this sense, every person
speaks a dialect of his or her native language. We can also say every
speaker of English speaks with an accent. Accent is the appropriate term
for systematic phonological variation, or the patterned differences in
sounds of spoken language.
Listen to this:
[clip of accents heard in Miami]
[overlay with clip of crowd ambient noise]
Narrator
So, we know Miami English is influenced by the predominance of Latin
Americans from the Caribbean, where Spanish is strung together by
pushing the tongue forward, closer to the front teeth, as opposed to the
middle roof of the mouth.
Speakers of Miami English have developed a way of talking that applies
the phonotactic constraints of Spanish on English. The results can be
jarring to the ear—a Spanish-sounding "d," for example, formed by
thrusting the tongue forward rather than keeping it firmly behind the teeth,
or an inappropriately rolled "r.”
[sound clip from Gerardo Mejía’s Rico Suave]
[clip on phonetics of Miami English by Yavas]
Narrator
This type of rhythm was originally referred to as machine-gun rhythm
because each underlying rhythmical unit is of the same duration, similar to
the transient bullet noise of a machine-gun. It’s what gives Miami English
its unique Latin-flavor.
[overlay with clip exemplifying Spanish rhythm]
[clip of Yavas continuing]
Narrator
Let’s take a moment to think about what Dr. Yavas means when he says
vowel reduction. In phonetics, vowel reduction is a change in the acoustic
quality of the vowel, often making it shorter. Absence of stress on a
syllable is frequently associated with vowel reduction in the English
language. Many such syllables are pronounced with the centralized vowel
“schwa,” which is perceived as a weakening of the vowel.
[clip of Yavas continuing with lexical examples]
Narrator
We hit the streets of Miami—from Lincoln Road to Miracle Mile to Calle
Ocho—to put what we had just learned to the test.
This is what we found:
[intro clip from Mauricio and anecdote]
Narrator
We asked him how he could pick out the Miami accent more than 2,000
miles and an entire time zone away.
Was it their cadence? Their particular pronunciation? Their Latin rhythm
superimposed on the English langauge?
Not exactly . . .
[clip of Mauricio continuing]
Narrator
After this anecdote, we stopped him to point out his pronunciation of the
word “hotel.”
After all, applying the phonotactic constraints of one language while
speaking another language is an important source of accents, and the
Miami accent, in particular.
The Miami resident who says “otel” is simply enforcing the phonotactic
constraints of Spanish when speaking an English word.
[clip of Mauricio explaining Miami English pronunciation of the word “hotel]
Narrator
Let’s listen to the linguistic explanation.
[clip of Yavas explaining similar word spellings as creating distinct feature of Miami
English]
[clip of Mauricio using example of the word “super”]
[overlay with montage clip from “Sh*t Miami Girls Say” on YouTube]
Narrator
In Spanish, consonant clusters beginning with the letter s are not permitted
at the beginning of a word without being preceded by a vowel—as in the
words estudiante, escuela, and espalda. The Spanish speaker who says
“estudent” is enforcing the restrictions on possible combinations of sounds
found in Spanish when speaking English.
[clip of Mauricio using example of the word “estudiante”]
Narrator
Many of those whose speech is flavored with the Miami sound think
they're speaking with no accent at all. Some people with the accent even
speak fluent English and have spent most, if not all, of their lives in the
United States.
This phenomenon is common in bilingual regions.
In Miami, for example, non-Hispanic children going to school with
Hispanic children and being taught by bilingual teachers pick up features
not found in their monolingual English-speaking home.
[overlap with clip of children laughing]
Narrator
This socialization explains the twists of the tongue among many of nonHispanics who also speak with that unmistakable Miami accent. The
flavor of it is infused in their English, even though their English might be
perfect.
[clip of Yavas talking about children acquiring Miami English]
Narrator
So, what have we learned?
[overlay with Will Smith’s Miami]
Narrator
Can you recall the questions we posed at the beginning of this Podcast?
Let me remind you:
Where did Miami English come from? We learned from Florida
International University Linguistics Professor Mehemt Yavas that Miami
English is the result of direct contact between speakers of English and
speakers of the many different dialects of Latin American Spanish in a
highly bilingual city. We heard about how children acquire this dialectical
pattern through socialization at school and at home.
What are Miami English feature? We learned the difference in syllable
timing in English and in Spanish, and how this affects the sound of Miami
English. We also heard about how Spanish speakers apply the constraints
of their native language when speaking English, and how this results in
differences in pronunciation.
How can we identify it? Well, you’ll know it when you hear it. . . or you
could just listen for the word “bro.”
[amplify music “I’m going to Miami / Welcome to Miami”]
Narrator
[fade out]
A special thanks to David, Mauricio, Professor Yavas, Jo and Professor
Carter, and especially Audacity tutorials for making this Podcast possible.