Miami accent

"Miami dialect" redirects here. For the Native American language, see Miami-Illinois language.

The Miami accent is an evolving American English regional accent, or sociolect-in-formation, spoken in South Florida, particularly in Miami-Dade, originating from central Miami. The Miami accent is most prevalent in younger, native South Floridians who live in greater Miami and Miami Beach . This ethnolect is a native variety of English and not a form of Spanglish, broken English, or interlanguage; it is not spoken by all Latinos in this region.

Origin

The Miami accent developed amongst second- or third-generation Miamians, particularly young adults whose first language was English, but were bilingual in English and Spanish. Since World War II, Miami's population has grown rapidly every decade, due in part to the post-war baby boom. In 1953, the US Census stated 90% of Miamians spoke with the a normal American accent. Beginning with large international immigration and the Cuban exodus of the late 1950s, Miami's population has drastically grown every decade since then. Many of these immigrants began to inhabit Miami's large central business district. By 1970, the US Census stated 52% of Miamians spoke with the accent .By 2000, about 82% of Miamians spoke it. Growing up in the cities crowded central core, second-, third-, and fourth-generation Miamians of the 1960s foreign influx, developed the Miami accent. It is now the customary dialect of many Hispanic Americans of diverse national heritages, not simply Cubans, in the Miami metropolitan area, as other Latin American settlers from nearby Caribbean area - Puerto Ricans and Dominicans - arrived in Miami. Large populations of Latino Americans of African descent (including mulattoes), started by Afro-Puerto Ricans, tend to acquire a mixture of distinct Caribbean accent (similar to that of nearby islands in the West Indies from Puerto Rico) and African American Vernacular English (AAVE) by tone, and Spanish and Miami dialect by phonology.

Phonological characteristics

The following are typical phonological (pronunciation) characteristics of the Miami accent:

• Rhoticity (i.e. the pronunciation of the polstalveolar "R" sound in all environments), like with most American English; also, though rarely, a "rolled R" may be heard after a consonant.
• Pronunciation of  /æ/ (the "short a" as in the words class, rap, hand, etc.) with the jaw and/or tongue more lowered than in a General American accent, thus approaching  [a].
• Clear alveolar "L" ( listen) only, unlike the relatively dark velar "L" ( listen) of General American.
• High rising terminal (also known as "upspeak"): a rising intonation may be heard at the ends of declarative statements (making them sound like questions), similar to the stereotype of "Valley Girl speech."
• Cot–caught merger in transition: the vowel sounds in words like cot versus caught, clod versus clawed, pond versus pawned, etc. are beginning to merge into a single sound.

It is possible to differentiate this variety from an interlanguage spoken by second language speakers in that this ethnolect does not generally display the following features:

• There are no confusions of tense and lax vowels, outside contexts where other native speakers often vary usage.
• There is no addition of /ɛ/ before initial consonant clusters with /s/.
• Speakers do not confuse of /dʒ/ with /j/, (e.g., Yale with jail).
• Speakers do not use the alveolar tap [ɾ] or alveolar trill [r] of Spanish.

Lexical characteristics

Speakers of the Miami accent may be heard to use "calques": idioms (that would sound awkward or unusual to other native English speakers). For example, instead of saying, "lets get out of the car," someone from Miami might say, "let's get down from the car". Other Miami terms especially common among Miami youth, often called "slang," include:

• Bro: a very familiar, informal term of address
• Chanx or chanks: flip-flops (abbreviation of the Spanish "chancletas")
• Chonga: a particular South Florida Hispanic female fashion and associated youth subculture
• Irregardless: regardless
• 'Member?: Remember?
• Mission: anything that takes a long time (as in "What a mission!" or something being "Such a mission"); similar to the use of "a chore" in the same context
• Qué: used before adjectives in approving situations, such as "Qué cute" (How cute!), "Qué nice" (How nice!), or "Qué cool" (So cool!)
• Super [ˈsupɚ]: commonly used to mean "very" or "really"
• Supposably: supposedly
• "Pero like": Used instead of "but like"
• "Took the light": Running a yellow light in traffic
• "Eating shit": Hanging out, or teasing someone

In popular culture

Many of the characters in the 1970s PBS sitcom, ¿Qué Pasa, USA? speak in the Miami accent. It was the first bilingual American sitcom. ¿Qué Pasa, USA? follows the Peñas, a Cuban-American family living in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood. The series is praised as being very true-to-life and accurately, if humorously, portraying the life and culture of Miami's Cuban-American population. Today, the show is cherished by many Miamians as a true representation of life and language use in Miami.

Notable lifelong native speakers

• Gloria Estefan — "[T]here are certainly successful people with the Miami accent, among them singer Gloria Estefan"
• Danell Leyva
• Pitbull
• Andy Garcia

See also

• North American English regional phonology
• Regional vocabularies of American English

External links

• Origins of the Miami accent (WLRN)
• Birth of the Miami accent
• Comedic representation of Miamians with the Miami accent
• ¿Qué Pasa, USA? - Episode One