People from Miami sound like foreign tourists?

[Acajack]

In any event, does Miami-Dade County even have the legal authority to declare Spanish (or Haitian Creole or any other language) as an official language?


The State of Florida's official language is English, and counties and municipalities exist under the state's authority.


BTW, official language status is not the same as offering select services in languages other than English for practical reasons or as a courtesy.

[southwest88]

Originally Posted by Acajack

This is a Google feature is it not? Not Miami-Dade County. All of those languages (incl. Spanish) are certainly not official languages of the county.

Got me. I was responding to your note in #28 above - that there was no access to a Spanish version of the site. But there is, & a lot of languages, too. My congrats to whoever hooked them up - seems to be an excellent range of selections.

Yep, I don't know that FL counties (or any other, for that matter) can declare official languages for that county. I would think that would be @ least @ the state level - but FL is its own little world, after all.

[ElGuito]

The official language of State of Florida, et al, is English, yet official doesn't legally mean mandatory.
The rationale (I hope) in providing services, State, County, Local in several languages is to integrate, not accommodate, all ranges, to the laws of the land. Think about a 50ish legal immigrant, would You let him take the lessons to drive and the test in a language he/she understands and be somehow educated out there on the road, or narrow it to English only so they will be out and about with no knowledge.
Same for ordinances, taxes.

I don't get Fox TV, but on the other local channels, NBC for example, anchors and reporters are fluent in both languages, no discernible accent on one or the other.

[jwolfer]

People I have met from Miami who were educated in Miami, and spoke Spanish at home usually sounded general American for the most part. (Miami English does have some of the features and rhythm of Spanish.)* They were essentially native speakers in both Spanish and English.

Cubans I met who spoke Spanish at home but were educated in Jacksonville, other places in North Florida or the inland portions of South Florida( like LaBelle and Clewiston) had Southern accents in their English and Cuban accent in their Spanish.

* New Mexico had a large Spanish speaking population historically. If you listen to older Anglos from NM their speech in English even has some of the rhythms of Spanish, even though they never spoke Spanish. Some would say those old Anglos would sound foreign.

Similarly the upper Midwest had lots of Scandanvians, the English their was influenced by Swedish and Norweigan so to some their accents would sound foreign

[Loggerhead Shrike]

I agree completely with JWOLFER Accurate linguistic description. I know a couple of "anglos" married to Cuban-Americans or who hang a lot with them and even they have the slight Miami entonation.

[karstic]

Spanish and Creole are official in Miami Dade.