The Erosion of Español
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The quandary: Children and grandchildren of the immigrants who made Miami a vibrant international center lack the Spanish skills on which much of the city’s success and identity are built.
“Miami grew as a city along with the Spanish language and bilingualism,” says University of Miami linguist Andrew Lynch. “Bilingualism was the foundation of Miami as a global city.”
That foundation is showing cracks. The question is whether it can be shored up—whether Miami, where fully 69 percent of the population (61 percent in Miami-Dade County) is Hispanic, can remain the robustly bilingual city it has become.
THE FIRST WAVE
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There is no single barometer of bilingual business activity here, but there is every indication that it is vast and vital.
South Florida is home to nearly 1,200 multinational corporations with a combined revenue of more than $200 billion, according to a survey by WorldCity Business Magazine released in January.
Our 20 largest multinationals account for 180,000 local jobs, and employ another 600,000 people abroad, largely in Latin America, said WorldCity president Ken Roberts.
“We have no hard data, but we can extrapolate from anecdotal evidence that when the people here are talking to the people there, they are doing so mostly in Spanish,” Roberts said.
The magazine’s findings echoed a 2004 doctoral thesis at Florida International University by Douglas McGuirk. “Spanish . . . has established itself as the preferred language of trade in Miami-Dade County,” McGuirk wrote. “Miami-Dade is the U.S. leader in Latin American-owned businesses and has more company headquarters that trade with Latin America than other U.S. cities.”
Spanish-language entertainment is a highly visible part of that commerce. Media giants like Univision and Telemundo have major operations here, attracting a celebrity set—Juanes, Alejandro Sanz, Paulina Rubio and Carlos Vives, to drop a few names—that has made Miami the L.A. of Latin America.
Banking is another major component. “The bulk of financial institutions in Miami are from Latin America and from Europe, and many of the European banks are here to do business with Latin America,” notes economist Manuel Lasaga, president of the Coral Gables consulting firm StratInfo.
And yet FIU researcher McGuirk Miami-Dade found that of nearly 250 Miami-Dade businesses that responded to survey questions about language issues, ‘almost a quarter . . . indicated that they needed more bilingual employees, and more than a quarter indicated that their employees’ Spanish language skills needed improvement.”
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Tony Rodríguez, a senior vice president at Smith Barney in Miami, says he realized early in his career that the Spanish he had spoken at home since coming to the United States from Cuba as a teenager was not sufficient for his professional aims. He has never taken classes, but he takes advantage of every opportunity to speak Spanish.
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BILINGUAL EDUCATION
The school system’s Division of Bilingual Education and World Languages estimates that 19,200 students are enrolled in some sort of bilingual program, mostly English-Spanish, at 109 Miami-Dade schools. (By comparison, Broward County has about 240 students at two elementary schools enrolled in what it calls dual education, according to world-languages curriculum specialist Blanca Gerra.)
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Be that as it may, ‘bilingual education programs in the U.S. most definitely fall short of actually producing ‘bilingual’ students, and Miami is no exception.” says UM’s Lynch, who has studied the issue extensively.
The reason, he says, is that U.S. schools focus their efforts primarily on the elementary grades and on bringing foreign-born students into the mainstream, “making English the dominant language, not bilingualism.”
Even when the opportunity exists for high-level Spanish instruction, it’s not always enough. Rigorous International Baccalaureate programs at four Miami-Dade public high schools offer Spanish, and a fully bilingual public high school is scheduled to open in Coral Gables in 2009-10, but students themselves often choose other paths.
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(Posted on March 4, 2008)
Comments
The implication in this article is that Miami was never an American town in the traditional sense of the world, and that it always was an Afro-Carriben place.
Posted by St. Louis CofCC Blogmeister at 6:10 PM on March 4
I am happy to see this success story. It reinforces what most restrictionists say, halt the flow and give us time to Americanize the masses in our midst.
Posted by PBL at 6:34 PM on March 4
I think that this is a sign that Hispanics finally get it.Lately Hispanics I work with choose to speak english between each other.I guess the wave of hatred against Hispanics has had its effects.Or could it be the wave of love for our white Anglo Saxon Culture which is dependent upon speaking the english language.
Posted by Tony Soprano at 6:35 PM on March 4
Articles like this are so racist, it’s disgusting.
Liberals love to manipulate minority issues for their own evil agenda and this is a prime example. I’m a Puerto Rican AMERICAN. I don’t speak more than a few words of Spanish. The language of my two cultures is ENGLISH. I am tied by blood, FAMILY to both Whites and Puerto Ricans. We all speak ENGLISH. Puerto Rico is an important part of our lives. Many of our family live there (many also live inside the continental US). And I cannot stress this enough. We all primarily speak ENGLISH. Many of use (myself included) cannot speak Spanish hardly at all.
Our duty and our loyalty are to the United States. But a large part of our culture, family and daily life are of Puerto Rico. To suggest that somehow, those in my family are somehow less “hispanic” is an intolerable insult.
The truth is that The Left in this country is trying to manipulate hispanics into not integrating, not belonging, because they think that, somehow, they can use us some sort of fifth column to advance their sick communist goals.
I’ve got news for them. American hispanics won’t tolerate that. Not in the least. I think they are in for many surprises from us, politically.
Posted by at 7:42 PM on March 4
The idea that Miami could only be a successful city if Spanish is spoken there is absurd.
Posted by at 8:38 PM on March 4
I heard this woman, a teacher at a community college, talking about how she had taken five years of Spanish only to find it pretty much impossible to communicate with native Spanish speakers. And Johnny is supposed to become bilingual?
Posted by Drew at 8:40 PM on March 4
This article is so thoroughly idiotic it’s hard to know where to begin, but I’ll attack it on two fronts.
First of all, the issue of language has always been the least important of the concerns in regard to the US’s shortsighted policy of mass immigration, and the social engineering that is forcing the countries Euro-Americans into minority status. A large number of Jamaicans and Sudanese speak very good English already, and those ultra-violent gangbangers who run drugs in Los Angeles and Arizona speak pretty decent English. Yet if you wind up in the middle of a gangland fight in a (once) nice part of LA County, it doesn’t matter squat whether the gangsters are conversing in English or Spanish. You’re just as screwed. The problem is background, culture, ability to make it here and most of all, simple demographics— when Euro-Americans slip below a certain percentage in a region, they move away and the remaining Euro-Americans find themselves under siege. This is how you destroy a nation.
It’s not an issue of language and never has been, and I’m really sick and tired of well-meaning (sometimes) but stupid (always) English-only proponents, or immigration opponents who obsess so much about English-only or language in general. It’s a non-issue, and whether the soaring Latino population in Miami does or does not speak English, none of that changes the fact that American Whites are now a permanent minority there and soon will be a minority throughout the nation. As this point is approached, there is less and less of a reason for American Whites to stay here in a place where all our efforts are merely leading to the creation of a Socialist, imperialist state that is squarely against our own well-being. This is why we have been seeing so much of the recent phenomenon of Italian-Americans re-emigrating to Italy, or Germanic-Americans moving to Germany and so forth— young White families in the USA can see where the future is going, and it’s not in any way a future that favors us here in North America.
Oh, and the second point, which is that the very premise of the article is idiotic. I spent 2 years working in Miami and only left last year, and if anything the place is even more predominantly Spanish-speaking now than ever before. It’s not just Cubans now, in fact there’s a big Mexican and Central-American population that is setting up there. And it’s through all the generations. Southern Florida is now basically a microcosm of California, Arizona and New Mexico— you cannot get a job there without Spanish fluency. And frankly, for my own purposes, as I said I couldn’t care less. Language is a side issue in any case, the problem is the sheer numbers that we are already dealing with.
Posted by Reese at 9:08 PM on March 4
Especially considering that a lot of native-born, non-Hispanic whites fled South Florida to get the h3ll away from all the Hispanics, this is good news. It means that those who speak mainly English are assimilating, FINALLY.
Posted by at 9:09 PM on March 4
I think that this is a sign that Hispanics finally get it.Lately Hispanics I work with choose to speak english between each other.I guess the wave of hatred against Hispanics has had its effects.
I don’t know about that - maybe they’re just tired of uttering two to three times the number of syllables just to say the same thing.
Posted by Doppelgangbanger at 10:25 PM on March 4
PBL, Tony Soprano and anon @ 9:09 p.m.: I hate to be a downer here, but not only is this article grossly inaccurate, it fails entirely to appreciate the real scope of US demographic changes, of which language is a tiny, rather insignificant part. I’ve worked as a substitute teacher in Miami and also in Southwestern states, and the performance and dropout rate of the America’s upcoming majority are absolutely, painfully appalling. Even in suburban schools, the Euro-American student population is a distinct minority. If anything, the prevalence of Spanish now in Miami (let alone in California and Arizona) is even more powerful than before, due in part to the waves of Central Americans complementing the earlier influx of Miami Cubans. But the language is the least of the problems. The bitter truth is that not only are the immigrants in these cities and states not assimilating, it’s getting worse with each generation— 3rd and 4th generation Latinos have the worst school performance and drop-out rates, and the highest crime, drug use and teen pregnancy rates. This is our future.
It’s annoying when attempts are made to use English-language proficiency as a proxy for assimilation or other demographic issues, because it’s notoriously poor— it’s not the language that matters, it’s the behavior of the people and the way they relate to the society. In the schools and in other places where I’ve worked, Latinos spoke Spanish and sometimes English, while immigrants from other countries spoke English or something like Creole or Somali. But it didn’t matter— as the White population in the surrounding region plummeted, then crime, vandalism, graffiti, gang violence, drug problems and generalized misery invariably increased. The language used by the new 3rd world majority didn’t matter at all, if anything it got *worse* as English become more commonly heard.
We have to move away from naive notions of assimilation in general. There’s a reason that the USA stayed together in previous generations— it’s because the vast majority of the population originated in Europe, with all the ancient ties of blood, culture and history which enabled us to understand each other. When the USA has a White minority (which will take shape by 2025 if not earlier), then those bonds in North America will be gone forever. We cannot allow ourselves to be distracted by issues such as language choice or naive sob stories about assimilation— this is all about demographics, and unless we act immediately to stem the mass inflows to the country, we ourselves will be swamped, and our country will disappear.
Posted by Reese at 10:45 PM on March 4
“Especially considering that a lot of native-born, non-Hispanic whites fled South Florida to get the h3ll away from all the Hispanics, this is good news. It means that those who speak mainly English are assimilating, FINALLY.”
Does everybody here agree with this? Hispanics speaking English is good for the NeoCons dream but for those of us who care about genes in addition to culture, isn’t a balkanized country better to prevent race mixing?
Posted by Samuel at 10:48 PM on March 4
“The idea that Miami could only be a successful city if Spanish is spoken there is absurd.” Posted at 8:38PM on March 4.
Of course it’s absurd, Miami was a successful city before Spanish was even widely used there. It was a very rich vacation and retirement destination by ENGLISH speaking residents of Eastern States and others for years and years. Absurd is the word.
Posted by Bobby at 12:11 AM on March 5
So if people are no longer speaking English in an American city, that’s a good thing, but if people are no longer speaking Spanish it’s a good thing?
I used to comment more on the articles Amren posts. My comments have pretty much fallen off of late, however, not because I’m not angered/depressed/disappointed by the articles (I am), or because I don’t have the time (I don’t, but that’s never stopped me), but because there’s not much more to say anymore. These articles speak for themselves: the West, and the USA in particular, are dying thanks to greed, corruption, stupidity, naivety, fanaticism, laziness, and psychosis. We’re handing over our countries to the enemy and nobody cares, apparently. The GOP just nominated the worst possible candidate in that regard because a bunch of goons didn’t want to vote for a Mormon, who had at least a chance of being better than McCain.
Posted by Alan at 12:38 AM on March 5
If any white wants to know what it will be like once whites become a minority in the U.S., go visit South Florida. Nothing will open your eyes more than a stroll along US 1, south of Boca Raton. And the closer you get to Homestead, the worse it gets. Then if that didn’t do it for you, go over to Ft. Myers and get an even bigger treat. Now watch yourself, you might be staring or dissing a drug smuggler who won’t think twice about putting a piece of lead smack in the middle of your forehead.
Posted by GetBavkJack at 12:52 AM on March 5
Even when the opportunity exists for high-level Spanish instruction, it’s not always enough….students themselves often choose other paths.
What?? How dare those students make choices! The diversity mongers order you to take Spanish immersion classes NOW!!
Tony Rodríguez, a senior vice president at Smith Barney in Miami, says he realized early in his career that the Spanish he had spoken at home since coming to the United States from Cuba as a teenager was not sufficient for his professional aims.
That’s a little known fact among non-Spanish speakers. Many of the so-called bilingual speakers only speak pidgin Spanish that will not pass the sniff test when courting wealthy South American clients. The funny thing is that many of them don’t know it because everyone in their family and barrio speaks the same low-class form of spanish!
A Columbian immigrant banker in Florida once told me that a lot of “spanish-speakers” in banking had no idea how bad their spanish was. They would chat him up in spanish at meetings and conferences, telling him that they were interviewing in Miami for international banking jobs…never knowing that he laughed at them later because they were speaking what he called “mama-spanish” (baby talk). He said it was sad how many of them fly down to Miami just to make fools out of themselves in interviews.
Posted by Jill at 1:21 AM on March 5
Interesting comments on this article. They demonstrate that a lot more than just white nationalists (and the occasional antagonistic black) are reading AmRen.
I’m not sure who the comments celebrating the supposed “assimilation” that a decline in Spanish-speaking supposedly signifies are from. If they are whites, then I guess the old trope about beggars not being choosers is as true as ever. Simply speaking English is, of itself, insufficient to consider one “assmilated.” Hispanics, like all immigrants, even when “fluent” English speakers continue to speak with marked accents, which serve to highlight their foreignness, and their overall level of exposition is typically at a markedly lower level than white English speakers (eg the Puerto Rican’s comment on this thread). Of course, it’s understandable that whites desperate to find something, anything, positive in the immigration onslaught that is tranforming their nation and lives might cease on this sort of “evidence” in order to imagine away the horrible future that awaits them and their kind. Sadly, it will not do.
Posted by Mike T at 3:15 AM on March 5
Did you ever notice neighborhoods filled mainly with illegal immigrants are usually called “vibrant”.
“Vibrant” in the sense you should avoid these areas at all costs at night and probably during the day.
Posted by Dennis at 9:56 AM on March 5
English-language proficiency and democracy are merely precursors for globalization and third-world immigration. The vast majority of colored immigrants (North African, Arab, Sub-Saharan African and South Asian) in Europe are either Anglophones, or, English is the only European language they’re familiar with (to the consternation of their mostly non-English speaking hosts). Promoting English has little or nothing to do with advancing the interests of White European peoples, in North America or elsewhere.
Posted by at 10:34 AM on March 5
Now that Fidel has resigned, can’t all Cubans be repatriated to make Cuba vibrant? We’d like Miami back, thank you.
Posted by at 11:34 AM on March 5
“I don’t know about that - maybe they’re just tired of uttering two to three times the number of syllables just to say the same thing.”
There’s something to that. English has a very high information density and twice as many words as any other language. And if we can’t find a word for something we will make one up.
Posted by Godzilla Pimp at 11:57 AM on March 5
Bobby wrote: Of course it’s absurd, Miami was a successful city before Spanish was even widely used there. It was a very rich vacation and retirement destination by ENGLISH speaking residents of Eastern States and others for years and years. Absurd is the word.
Exactly. Before the Cuban invasion, Miami (then about 90% white)was the wealthiest city in the Southeast. Millionaires both real (Al Capone) and fictional (Charles Foster Kane) lived there, either permanently or as seasonal “snowbirds.” Now, thanks to the Cubans, Puerto Ricans, other Latinos, Haitians and other Caribbean islanders (along with the native blacks, of course), 90%-nonwhite Miami is the 2nd or 3rd poorest city in the entire nation. “Vibrant, successful international center,” indeed. If that’s “success,” I’d sure hate to see what failure looks like.
Posted by Strider at 2:12 PM on March 5
“Did you ever notice neighborhoods filled mainly with illegal immigrants are usually called “vibrant”.”
I noticed that right away. The word used here was “robustly bilingual” and “bilingual business activity here but there is every indication that it is vast and vital.”
I somehow don’t think these same words were used to describe the whites who left Miami, or were used to describe the AmRen conference for that matter either, or even the use of just plain old English.
“The Left in this country is trying to manipulate hispanics into not integrating, not belonging, because they think that, somehow, they can use us some sort of fifth column to advance their sick communist goals.”
It’s working. It seems nothing can stop their sick agenda. Look at second generation hispanics. Heck, don’t wait that long. It seems they buy a ticket on the hate-whitey train soon after arrival.
Posted by at 2:18 PM on March 5
This may not represent the beginnings of assimilation. It is entirely possible the current crop of Miami residents includes many Haitians who are not fluent in Spanish - or any other language.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 4:17 PM on March 5
Dennis, the word vibrant, is an emotionally charged word, not neccessarily positive. Does it mean overcrowded area. music and partying at all hours of the night, street vendors without licenses selling dubious products,(both in their origin and freshness), a place with excess noise. I think most people coming home from a days work, would prefer a relaxing atmosphere, with no noise, partying, overcrowding,etc.
Posted by Bobby at 7:34 PM on March 5
I would like to point out one more thing about Hispanics. I have never seen such a belligerently anti-intellectual culture in my life. It has nothing to with IQ. Hispanic IQ is higher than Blacks, but when I see a Blacks in a doctor’s office, I smile, because I know that they are at least going to pick up a magazine and read it. Yes, around here, the Blacks read vastly more than the Hispanics. This anti-intellectualism is across the board. They are opposed to education in general, to learning, to reading, to abstract thinking, to reading a paper, to subscribing to or reading magazines, to watching the news or to listening to the news on the radio.
The illegals are actually better in this regard. I hang out at their bars and many have say a 2nd grade education but I will start an intelligent conversation with them and they will all crowd around me to listen and translate. It’s like they’ve never talked to anyone smart in their lives and they actually enjoy the stimulation.
Reese’s post is excellent. The next Hispanic generation is worse, the next is worse still, and the next lower than ever. The least criminal, nicest and most hungry for learning are the illegals. Around my place, it’s the kids of the immigrants and illegals that are the nightmare. They are the cause of the graffiti, crime, gangs, idiot culture, drugs, laziness/idleness, etc. Most of them are in love with Black Underclass culture and try to emulate it.
Even middle class Hispanics with good jobs, money, nice clothes and cars do not read. In the doctors office, they watch TV or stare at the wall. I guess they read to balance or checkbook or read a menu.
Some of the local Black/Hispanics around my place saw me with a book. They were examining like it was some strange archaeological artifact. I’m sure they’d never read one in their lives, and I doubt they ever will.
Posted by Robert Lindsay at 1:39 AM on March 6
Did you ever notice neighborhoods filled mainly with illegal immigrants are usually called “vibrant”.
“Vibrant” in the sense you should avoid these areas at all costs at night and probably during the day.
Posted by Dennis at 9:56 AM on March 5
I always assumed “vibrant” meant that their car stereos were so loud they made the buildings vibrate.
Posted by Jill at 10:20 AM on March 6
What many people don’t realize is that Miami’s hispanic community is mostly white, from Cuba and South America. Very few come from Mexico. It is vastly different from hispanic communities elsewhere in the country. Unfortunately the government statistics don’t distiguish much between white hispanics and mestizos, and lump all “hispanics” in the same category.
Posted by at 11:24 AM on March 6
“Unfortunately the government statistics don’t distiguish much between white hispanics and mestizos, and lump all “hispanics” in the same category.”
That’s the favorite racist labeling coming from the U.S. government. They don’t even take into account that “hispanic” and “latino” are both misnomers.
Posted by Ben D. at 12:22 AM on March 7
Jill wrote: I always assumed “vibrant” meant that their car stereos were so loud they made the buildings vibrate.
Not to mention the near-24/7 shriek of police sirens.
Posted by Strider at 3:21 PM on March 7
Jill and some others mention the bad Spanish spoken by so many “Spanish speakers”. I know very little Spanish, but even I can tell a difference. When I was stationed in Puerto Rico in 1980 I was having meetings regularly with a doctor who himself was Puerto Rican but of Spanish parentage, and educated in Spain.
On several occasions I entered his office while he was still on the telephone. When he was speaking the Spanish of an educated Spaniard, it was like music to my ears! To those of you who think all Spanish sounds like that sneering, rat-a-tat noise you hear in East Los Angeles, let me tell you this: it’s just not true. Spoken properly, it has a great sound! In the years since, I have had the chance to hear proper Spanish on a few occasions and it was a pleasure. Lately, I have heard it from a very nice, and highly successful Mexican businessman I know. (He also speaks better English than most English speakers, but that is another topic entirely).
Do I want Spanish as a second US language? No, I don’t. But if I have to hear Spanish at all, hearing it from the educated would be my preference.
Posted by the friendly grizzly at 10:43 AM on March 8
”..if I have to hear Spanish at all, hearing it from the educated would be my preference.”
True. Hearing well-spoken Spanish from an educated person from any Spanish-speaking country is pleasurable. It gets irritating to hear the bad and even broken Spanish from “hispanics” who spend some time here, especially when they mix it with English. It is just horrible. There are some “hispanics” who don’t even speak Spanish, or a very limited broken version of it. They are the ones who seem to be prominent in groups such as La Raza and other fake identity groups. They just like to use the fact that they have Spanish surnames and possibly darker skin and call themselves “hispanic” for their political and economic gains in this country. They are at minimum confused about their identities, but easily adopt any racist idea that will push them ahead. This is due to the brainwashing in the universities mainly. They claim to be apart from the Spaniards in heritage yet they carry their surnames and speak their language. It’s pretty screwy.
Posted by Ben D. at 7:04 PM on March 8
“That’s a little known fact among non-Spanish speakers. Many of the so-called bilingual speakers only speak pidgin Spanish ….The funny thing is that many of them don’t know it because everyone in their family and barrio speaks the same low-class form of spanish! “
Jill
……………………………..
That is indeed true. ¡Absolutamente verdad!
It’s also true that many of the “Spanish-speaking” teachers employed in bilingual programs are just as ignorant of the language, speaking only uneducated “house Spanish” or “mama Spanish” as your friend said. But no one around them realizes it, since they’re all equally bad.
Posted by ghw at 8:58 PM on March 9
” English has a very high information density and twice as many words as any other language.
And if we can’t find a word for something we will make one up.”
Posted by Godzilla Pimp
…………………….
Or we will appropriate one from another language. Of such exotic borrowings, modern English is largely comprised.
Posted by ghw at 9:08 PM on March 9
“Did you ever notice neighborhoods filled mainly with illegal immigrants are usually called “vibrant”.”
That’s because they can’t find any other word that sounds polite.
Posted by at 9:21 PM on March 9