You might’ve heard it when you're out on the town, at Publix, or at that cafe down the street. Or, you might hear it when you open your own mouth...
Well, I've been absent while school has been heating up over the last month, so I have some catching up to do with the content...
This has been floating around social media circles in Miami for well over a month now, and it's something that I've been hyper-aware of since I was 15. I had to be; I was in a theatre conservatory where they had to spank this new Miami twang out of me with corks in my mouth and other enunciation tricks...!
I'll never forget the word, "belonging," how I would hit those two g's way too hard. I had no idea I was doing it until my acting teacher (incidentally of German descent) became enraged and pronounced it nearly 50 times for me so I would understand that the g's are mostly silent...
I was also egregiously pronouncing the "l" in "salmon" into my early 20's and only learned that "irregardless" is NOT a word at the age of 25. But, alas, my years involved in the performing arts successfully erased the remnants of a dialect which is the norm in this county.
I have ALWAYS been fascinated hearing old-timers that call the city "Miamah." One of the first nineteenth century spellings of this area was, in fact, "Ma-ama," so those that pronounced it that way weren't completely off their rockers.
Irregardless (wink wink), what has occurred in the creation of this dialect (or accent, if you prefer) is a living, breathing example of exactly the stuff that transformed New York's "sound" over a century ago; Chicago, Philadelphia; Boston well before those; the Southland during the infancy of the nation, etc., etc.
It's a truly exciting and very American phenomenon that one can witness by visiting South Florida and speaking with Miamians!
Here's the video (not new--for the benefit of you out-of-towners that have never seen it) in the link above that spoofs young Miamians speaking with one another, but nails the dialect with eerie precision...
The fact that it is being studied now (and recognized) in the halls of academia is what excites me the most.
Here's a more general look at how we all differ in the way we speak American English across the United States via Joshua Katz's fascinating study at NCSU (scroll through all of the maps--you'll be amazed!):