Language
With the emerging importance of ethnicity and the increased effects of segregation, Cubans within Miami attempted to reassert the Spanish language. In Miami, the Spanish language was spoken to a larger extent than in other cities with large Hispanic populations; also it was spoken in more diverse settings in Miami than any other city. Furthermore, the 1970 census confirmed that Miami's Spanish-speaking population was 24 percent. The Spanish language was becoming a norm in Miami as it was more extensively spoken by Miami's Cuban elite. Language became increasingly important in 20th-century Miami as a result of the Cuban influx and this had impacts on other non-Latin communities.
Essentially non-Latin communities began to oppose the rise of the Spanish language as a growing force within Miami. This can be seen in the anti-bilingualism/English Only movement. This movement came about in 1980, after a long period of vast Cuban immigration and social reform. Language was becoming a pressing issue as "Miami had the first bilingual public school program in the modern period (1963) and the first English Only referendum (1980)". In fact the debates of English as Dade County's official language led to violent and dangerous riots within the 1980s. Cubans felt that by preserving their language, they were preserving a fundamental component of their culture. In the 2000 census, 59.2% of people in Miami-Dade County said that they spoke Spanish at home.
Read more about this topic: Cuban Migration To Miami
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“One who speaks a foreign language just a little takes more pleasure in it than one who speaks it well. Enjoyment belongs to those who know things halfway.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900)
“The human face is the organic seat of beauty.... It is the register of value in development, a record of Experience, whose legitimate office is to perfect the life, a legible language to those who will study it, of the majestic mistress, the soul.”
—Eliza Farnham (18151864)
“In a language known to us, we have substituted the opacity of the sounds with the transparence of the ideas. But a language we do not know is a closed place in which the one we love can deceive us, making us, locked outside and convulsed in our impotence, incapable of seeing or preventing anything.”
—Marcel Proust (18711922)