The Importance Of Bilingualism In Miami

I come from a small island in the Caribbean known as Puerto Rico. On this island Spanish is the central language, leading me to be fluent in Spanish. Later in my life as I grew, went to school and watched American TV I learned English, turning me bilingual. Bilingualism is defined as the ability to converse in two different languages. Were I come from most of my family and friends are bilingual, but when I came to Miami I didn’t expect to meet many people that could speak Spanish. As I began to observe the people from Miami I knew that this wasn’t the case. If you go to any place in Miami, you will probably find someone who is fluent in both English and Spanish. I found this extremely weird; I didn’t expect to encounter so much bilingualism in Miami.
UM is known as a diverse school filled with students from all around the world so I decided to use UM as my mini United States. In UM I heard everyone around me the things they said, what they talked about and what language they used. While eavesdropping on people’s conversations I noticed that Spanish was not very popular among the students. Although listening to student’s conversation did help me understand that bilingualism is not popular in the United States, it didn’t help me understand why. Through my research I found that around the world more countries are starting to become bilingual, I even found that: “It has been estimated that more than half the world's population is bilingual.” (Myth About Bilingualism). So the question is why is the most immigrant filled country in the world not the most bilingual country in the