Linguists Say a New English Dialect Has Emerged in Miami, Florida

• Bilingual Spanish and English speakers make up the majority of the Miami-Dade County population.
• As a result, phrases like “throw a photo” and “make a party” have become commonplace in the region.
• One linguist called the dialect “one of the most important linguistic convergences” in the Americas.

Next time you find yourself in the Magic City, you may hear a turn of phrase that piques your interest.

Listen carefully, because linguists say southern Florida is now home to a new English dialect.

Linguists Kristen D’Allessandro Merii and Phillip M. Carter published research in April officially identifying the new dialect, which they say has emerged in and around Miami, Florida over the last six decades.

Phrases like “make a party” and “get down from the car” are thanks to a large population of bilingual English and Spanish speakers in the region, Carter wrote in The Conversation.

This demographic evolution has led to the literal translation of Spanish words into English, which has in turn led to new and unique linguistic patterns.

For instance, Merii and Carter identified the emergence of “calques” — the direct translation of phrases from Spanish to English. Calques give the Miami community phrases like “throw a photo.” That’s a literal translation of the Spanish phrase “tirar una foto,” in which the verb “tirar” means “to throw” rather than “to take.” There’s also “married with” rather than “married to” thanks to a literal translation of the Spanish phrase “casarse con,” according to Carter.

Carter writes that this linguistic development has been in the works since 1959 when the Cuban Revolution ended and hundreds of thousands of Cubans migrated to Miami. The consistently high population of bilingual speakers who emerged created what Carter calls “one of the most important linguistic convergences in all of the Americas.”