In Miami, Spanish Is Becoming the Primary Language
| More news stories on Multilingual America |
|---|
Gisela Salomon, AP, May 29, 2008
{snip}
In many areas of Miami, Spanish has become the predominant language, replacing English in everyday life. Anyone from Latin America could feel at home on the streets, without having to pronounce a single word in English.
In stores, shopkeepers wait on their clients in Spanish. Universities offer programs for Spanish speakers. And in supermarkets, banks, restaurants—even at the post office and government offices—information is given and assistance is offered in Spanish. In Miami, doctors and nurses speak Spanish with their patients and a large portion of advertising is in Spanish. Daily newspapers and radio and television stations cater to the Hispanic public.
But this situation, so pleasing to Latin American immigrants, makes some English speakers feel marginalized. In the 1950s, it’s estimated that more than 80 percent of Miami-Dade County residents were non-Hispanic whites. But in 2006, the Census Bureau estimates that number was only 18.5 percent, and in 2015 it is forecast to be 14 percent. Hispanics now make up about 60 percent.
“The Anglo population is leaving,” said Juan Clark, a sociology professor at Miami Dade College. “One of the reactions is to emigrate toward the north. They resent the fact that (an American) has to learn Spanish in order to have advantages to work. If one doesn’t speak Spanish, it’s a disadvantage.”
According to the Census, 58.5 percent of the county’s 2.4 million residents speak Spanish—and half of those say they don’t speak English well. English-only speakers make up 27.2 percent of the county’s residents.
In the mainly Cuban city of Hialeah and in the Miami neighborhood of Little Havana, 94 percent of residents identified themselves as Hispanic.
Andrew Lynch, an expert on linguistics and bilingualism at the University of Miami, said that the presence of Spanish-speakers first became an issue in Miami-Dade County 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. The exodus of English speakers soon followed.
{snip}
. . . Lauren, was born and raised in Miami and they visit at least twice a year, but she feels that it’s no longer her hometown.
“I don’t like being there anymore. It is very, very different,” she said. “I cannot live there anymore, I can’t speak their language.”
Nevertheless, she likes the diversity of the population of South Florida and regrets not learning Spanish in school.
{snip}
Mary Bravo, a 37-year-old Venezuelan business owner, moved to Miami nine years ago. She understands English but only speaks a little.
“This land is theirs. We should try to speak English,” she said, “but they don’t even try to understand us.”
(Posted on May 29, 2008)
Comments
We’re frustrated that they don’t bother to learn English.
Posted by Joshua at 6:15 PM on May 29
“I don’t like being there anymore. It is very, very different,” she said. “I cannot live there anymore, I can’t speak their language.”
“Nevertheless, she likes the diversity of the population of South Florida and regrets not learning Spanish in school.”
Your tripping all over yourself honey with these conflicting statements. I just love the diversity but I don’t like living here anymore because of it. There’s also nothing stopping you from enrolling in a few Spanish classes now.
Posted by at 6:28 PM on May 29
‘but they don’t even try to understand us’
They got the idea that Americans want to understand them from the U.S. government. Untrue. What goes around comes around. Welcome to my world.
Posted by at 6:36 PM on May 29
Miami has English-only ordinances on the books. See how well they worked?
Posted by Question Diversity at 7:25 PM on May 29
Here are some words of advice that I heard years ago:learn your enemies language.
Posted by Peejay in Frisco at 7:51 PM on May 29
I don’t know why these lefties ever write these kinds of articles about southern Calif, because Spanish dominates there more than Miami. And that’s my informed opinion, because I’ve lived in both Calif. and Florida and know many cities in each state very well.
Probably Miami is always highlighted, because the vast majority of Cubans there are conservative Republicans, or at least conservative, and denigrating the city of Miami is a way for the left to denigrate right wing Hispanics without really saying so.
Posted by w.r. at 8:53 PM on May 29
For me, this is an outrage beyong description allowed to happen by elected official who are simply guilty of treason. And California in now nearly as bad as Florida. Hispanics are simply taking over the country by virtue of their soaring birthrates and the refusal of elected officals to seal the border. And no matter who is elected president things will only get worse. The nation crafted by our Founders, the best nation in the history of mankind is being dismembered by politicans and officals who have no love of country. Yet decision makers in Washington are routinely returned to office. And can anyone look at today’s potential presidents and their open-borders advocacy without realizing any one of them would simply further destroy our country. I know I can’t.
Posted by Vlad The Emailer at 9:19 PM on May 29
What really gets me is how the English language TV stations in Chicago put Spanish on the SAP, but the SPANISH stations refuse to put English on the SAP when they show Hollywood movies.
Seems this Bilingual stuff is only to make the English speakers bow before their new masters, the Spanish speakers!
Posted by at 9:32 PM on May 29
Speaking of Television, I have deleted all spanish speaking
channels on my television and find this a considerable improvement in general viewing. Try it.
Posted by Jim Stutz at 9:55 PM on May 29
**Nevertheless, she likes the diversity of the population of South Florida and regrets not learning Spanish in school.**
How is a nearly homogeneous hispanic population *diverse*?
Posted by at 9:58 PM on May 29
If we do not even try to understnd Spanish, it is because we have not voluntarily moved to their country. We also don’t speak Nahautl here.
I learned German in high school, and Japanese at my own expense and on my own time. I know a little Iroquois and something of the Latinate languages, but the expectation that I actively study Spanish or even pretend to understand it is tantamount to asking me to voluntarily participate in my own subjugation.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 12:08 AM on May 30
“Here are some words of advice that I heard years ago:learn your enemies language.”
Posted by Peejay in Frisco at 7:51 PM on May 29
I already did.
These “hispanics” who say that they don’t have to learn English are just ignorant people from the sticks in Latin America. Educated people don’t have that backwards mentality. They’re forgetting about the original hand that fed them.
Posted by Ben D. at 1:48 AM on May 30
Poor babies. Waaaaah!!! Such whiners. Although I grew up in Miami and mostly liked the Cubans I went to school with, sometimes I wonder how many hundreds of thousands of whites left South Florida just to get away from them, and from the other Hispanics.
In a few years I hope to get the heck out of Southern California, partly to get the heck away from all the Mexicans out here (if I can actually find some other place with fewer Mexicans).
Posted by at 3:24 AM on May 30
“Lauren, was born and raised in Miami and they visit at least twice a year, but she feels that it’s no longer her hometown.
“I don’t like being there anymore. It is very, very different,” she said. “I cannot live there anymore, I can’t speak their language.”
Nevertheless, she likes the diversity of the population of South Florida and regrets not learning Spanish in school.”
No Lauren, you don’t like the diversity or you would live there and try to learn the language. But as is, it’s like visiting a foreign country, you enjoy the visit but are glad to be home.
““This land is theirs. We should try to speak English,” she said, “but they don’t even try to understand us.””
Well if I moved to Venazuela, I woulnd’t have the right to complain that they don’t even try to understand us. How arrogant.
Posted by at 7:47 AM on May 30
Language divides people, as opposed to bringing them together. In Canada, the ongoing Quebec separation debacle is fueled by linguistic differences between Quebec and the rest of the country. Don’t be too surprised if activists talk about Florida splitting off from the rest of the United States. On the other hand, as being part of the U.S. keeps Miami from plummetting to third world standards, they may want to stay but do everything in their power to drive out non-Hispanics, and that process is currently underway.
Posted by Matt at 10:25 AM on May 30
Before vacationing in the U.S. I guess I’ll have to check to make sure they speak English.
Posted by Louis from Montreal at 10:54 AM on May 30
“Bilingual” means Spanish-speaking. If you walk into any store in the cheesy latin hell that Miami has become, they won’t be interested in German, French, Italian, etc. It has to be [Cuban] Spanish or it’s not truly bilingual (in their poorly-lit nightclub smoke-damaged eyes).
Posted by Concerned Citizens at 11:45 AM on May 30
I am furious and frustrated as I am typing this letter.
I work in Miami and just got off of the phone with a customer,it took me 5 minutes and about 300 words to convey a simple email address to a customer - even when I was speaking Spanish to him!
Communication is almost impossible with some of these immigrants
And I curse the bastards who allowed these HUGE numbers to enter this country.
This is being done intentionally to undermine and wreck this nation - there is no other possible reason that this level of immigration would be attempted without the advocates wanting to destroy this country.
Posted by Dave at 11:45 AM on May 30
This is the epitomy of a nation without a course. How could we have allowed so many foreginers into our country that we find ourselves living in areas where our native (you know the sense here) language has been displaced. In 40 short years we have allowed our demographics to be irrevocably changed from 90% white to less than 50% white in many southern states. Only an insane person would allow this. I am still waiting for all the glorious benefits and “cultural enrichment” we were promised by all the idiot liberals if only we would “tolerate” the invasion for a while. What we got instead was high crime, disparate cultures at odds, loss of a common language, and most likely the eventual break up of the US as white Americans flee the new comers. Unfortuantely, many of those fleeing are the same libs that trumpeted multiculturalsim and ethnic pride (look at all the Californians and now Floridians fleeing the states they destroyed). Sigh. This will not end well, especially as these “new Americans” begin to obtain the gov’t power.
Posted by at 11:57 AM on May 30
Those in the Alamo must be turning over in their graves. Viva la Mehico. The Mexican revolution is alive and well. May a curse be upon the insane liberal America hating enablers for destroying this once great country.
Posted by THE OLD SAGE at 11:58 AM on May 30
doesnt this prove that cubans cant be conservative ?conservatives want english to be the officical language.Im tired of hearing how cubans are the “model hispainics”. they are just a model for what NOT to do when it comes to immigration policy.
Posted by at 1:56 PM on May 30
Sixty-five years ago, in the middle of WWII, I started school in Paterson,NJ, speaking only German. I very quickly learned English.
People of German-speaking background still outnumber those of Spanish-speaking background in this country.
I’ll make a deal with these Hispanics. If they will learn German, I will try to learn Spanish, although at my age it would not be easy.
Frieden,
Allan
Posted by at 4:10 PM on May 30
I used to think that White hispanics would eventually assimilate to the White majority population but I’m not so sure anymore. I’ve been to Miami and the culture there is definitely third world. Even street signs are in Spanish. If these people with their economic backgrounds can’t assimilate into mainstream America then there’s zero chance that Mexicans and others will.
I hear people say all the time that America’s not what it used to be, yet amazingly they can’t put their finger on the reason why. The population has changed with Northern Europeans losing their dominant percentage in the population in the early 90s. No offense to Southern Europeans but the Northern European norms used be what every immigrant strived towards. Things are just going to keep on detiorating unless the ethnic balance in the population is stabilized by halting third world immigration. But doing that won’t America great again, only an unlikely transfusion of Northern European immigrants will do that.
Posted by at 6:20 PM on May 30
These people come from Cuba. In the future the US should refuse to take responsibility for the political mistakes of other countries. Instead of fighting Castro they simply left for
the high life in the USA, and then demanded that the USA change to suit them.
Posted by at 6:58 PM on May 30
As a Canadian I see America moving towards the same linguistic nightmare situation that Canada has tragically endured for several decades. I have commented on this on AmRen several times before. The USA is now seeing the establishment of permanent non-English speaking enclaves. The linguistic Balkanization of the USA will have very serious political consequences. This is the end result of many decades of politicians shamelessly pandering to the Cuban community.
Posted by at 9:38 PM on May 30
3:24 AM: The Sierra Nevada Mts are still pretty good, but the Mexicans started moving in about three years ago. There are not that many of them yet, but they’ve already taken tons of jobs “Americans won’t do” from a bunch of honest to God, almost 100% White, Americans who were actually doing those jobs that they just won’t do. Who would have thunk it? The Sierra is a prit near 90% White place right in California.
Forget the Central Valley though. It’s Hispanic-wrecked. Hispanic wrecked is what happens to any town or city in California when it gets over 60% Hispanic. In small #’s, they can be tolerated with overwhelming pain.
It infuriates me that in my own city, in order to get most jobs here, you need to be bilingual in a foreign language. Why? To speak with customers of whom the overwhelming majority are illegal alien criminals. So, to get a job, you need to learn a foreign language to deal with all the hordes of customers who are criminals. Ee gads.
Here in CA, if they are born in the US, the Hispanics speak flawless English. If the children of immigrants, they also speak Spanish. After a 2+ generations, most don’t speak a lot of Spanish.
Our Cuban policy is madness. Cubans are the only people on Earth who automatically get into the US if they merely set foot on our land. And they are almost 100% economic immigrants anyway, no different from the Mexicans pouring up here.
Posted by Robert Lindsay at 2:52 AM on May 31
Back when there were zero Mexicans in Tennessee, 1988, I was a cruise-ship musician out of the Miami port. Well, even back then, the downtown areas of Miami were Hispanic-oriented. At that time it seemed like a weird adventure to me. Twenty years later, I know it was a vision of the USA’s future.
Posted by Cousin Charlie from TN at 4:43 AM on May 31
Some Europeans (Germans) on holiday at Miami Beach, Florida were aghast when speaking English to the employees and the response was no hablas ingles. They asked in bewilderment is this not the United States of America and you do not speak English? The tourists headed to Naples on the West Coast of Florida where English is understood.
Posted by at 4:25 PM on May 31
“As a Canadian I see America moving towards the same linguistic nightmare situation that Canada has tragically endured for several decades.”
In half of Texas, that situation is already here.
Posted by kc at 6:35 PM on May 31
Here in north Florida, we’ve been experiencing a white-flight from south FL, as Hispanics have turned Miami and the area into the poorest city in the US. It also has 5 times the violent crime and AIDS rate of north FL. Now Hispanics head north too, and our kids are told they’d better learn Spanish, “as that’s the future of this country” says the director of my kids’ school. U.S. citizens from central FL and south can’t find work, or are even fired because they don’t speak the language of the invaders.
Posted by OnGuard at 11:06 PM on May 31
I lived in Miami from the age of 10 to about 19-1/2, then moved away from home.
A lot of people I knew moved away from Miami in order to get away from the overwhelming hordes of Hispanics, whether Cubans or the later waves.
Although I liked most of the Cubans I knew growing up, a lot of people got tired of arrogant people who refused to speak English even when they knew how.
Posted by at 2:55 AM on June 1
The only thing that might save the U.S. or at least Florida is an extremely tough English version of Quebec’s Bill 101. But I don’t think the political will is there.
Posted by at 1:08 PM on June 1
Hispanics claim frustration because Whites “don’t even TRY to understand Spanish?”
Why in hell SHOULD WE? This is OUR country. Our language is English, not Spanish. If you don’t care to learn English… get the hell out of our country and stay home where you belong!
Posted by Fed Up at 2:10 PM on June 1
I have written on hundreds of blogs, going back years and years, that the complacency that Americans show towards the continuing push to inject Spanish into this nation is going to be one sign of the acceleration of the downfall of the U.S. as we know it.
Whether its the explosive increase in Spanish radio stations, TV stations, newspapers, increaslingly trying to force it onto English speakers in schools, using little bits of it frequently in commercials, or whatever senario you care to think of—all are signs that English is being challenged. Furthermore, the people doing the challenging are an intransigent group, who are used to getting their way in this nation thanks to complacent Americans and their traitorous “representatives.”
Posted by Bobby at 4:52 PM on June 1
Bobby:
Good points. That’s the thing about language. Even more then immigration it has a way of sneaking up on you. Why the United States didn’t declare English it’s official language decades ago and vigourously enforce it, I do not know. Over 90% of the world’s countries have an official language but America doesn’t. Nobody makes any issue of Spanish being Mexico’s official language. In 1920 the Census showed one million Hispanics in the USA. It would have been so much easier for the USA to have had an official English language back then. As it is, Spanish has creeped into the vaccuum. Americans should have learned from us Canadians.
Posted by at 1:00 PM on June 2
This is why we need a national language (English). It isn’t our job to understand them. I was discriminated by the Girl Scout of “America” because I wasn’t “bi-lingual” i.e. English speakers need not apply.
Even though I had 5 years of professional shipping experience including 4 years with the fed’s; they deemed me ‘unqualified’.
It is time to boycott businesses that discriminate against us.
Posted by Alucard at 1:06 PM on June 2
“These “hispanics” who say that they don’t have to learn English are just ignorant people from the sticks in Latin America.”
Or in other words, our new masters. Perhaps you can hedge against them, by continuing to imply that they are ‘ignorant hicks’. Good luck with that.
To be a bit reactionary… The idea here is that americans are backward, and unaccomodating, yet NYC has two Korean language TV stations. Two. TV stations. How can They complain?
Posted by at 3:13 PM on June 2
Miami used to be a symbol of fun and sun. Now it’s becoming the new Detroit.
Posted by at 6:12 PM on June 2
Depressing to say the least. What major American city is next?
Posted by Save America at 8:26 PM on June 4