Call It Miami English: 'Get Down From the Car'

Americans all over the country might tell someone to "get out of the car." In South Florida, you might hear a slightly different version: "Get down from the car." Linguists say it's a not-random bit of slang—it's evidence of an emerging American dialect that might be called Miami English. In the Conversation, sociolinguist Phillip Carter of Florida International University writes that the dialect is a result of decades of Spanish-English blending that began in earnest in 1959 with the Cuban Revolution. Hundreds of thousands of Spanish speakers have since arrived in South Florida, creating what Carter calls "one of the most important linguistic convergences in all of the Americas."

Take that "get down from the car" construction. It's "based on the Spanish phrase 'bajar del carro,' which translates, for speakers outside of Miami, as 'get out of the car.' But 'bajar' means 'to get down,' so it makes sense that many Miamians think of 'exiting' a car in terms of 'getting down' and not 'getting out,'" writes Carter. In a study in the English World-Wide journal, Carter presented phrases to South Florida residents, as well as to people elsewhere in the US, and asked them to assess whether the wording sounded correct, per CBS News. In addition to "get down from the car," phrases that sounded fine to Miami-area subjects but a little off to others were "made the line" instead of "waited in line," "made a party" instead of "threw a party," and married "with" somebody instead of married "to" somebody.

Another earthier one: Miami residents might say they're "eating s---" to convey that they're "doing nothing." And the word "super" appears to be in wider circulation in the region as opposed to elsewhere, as in "super big" vs. "really big." All of the examples have their roots in the translation to English from Spanish by the original Cuban immigrants or the next generations. "This shows Miamians assess certain phrases differently and don't see some examples as 'ungrammatical,'" says Carter in an FIU news release. "So, those are the ones that are passed down. This is how dialects are born. Minor things add up." (More language stories.)