What do you think. Its strange but I sometimes hear more Spanish speakers in LA than English ones. Would you consider Spanish as the official language of the city and to some extent, the whole of California?

Considering how multicultural LA is, no.

nope......... It depends what areas you are in...

I voted yes but I thought LA was for Latin America... yep I feel like a real shmuck right about no.
I change my answer to now! Read Westsides reply and I have to say I concur. Too many different ethnicities, cultures, : Languages and dialects for one to have so much dominance. English maybe but I wouldn't even say that. Same thing for NY.

I usually come across Farsi more often. Go figure!

LA I dunno, but when I was in some parts of Orange County last year I was blown away by the number of people who could not speak English, only Spanish. I actually ended up translating for a person in a clothing store to one of the workers. What are the odds of that?

Farsi eh? It makes sense. North Vancouver has a really big persian population as well, something like 30,000 I think.

depends where u are.

This thread goes to show you that you can never rely on a visitors/tourists over all impressions of a city, especially in a multi-cultural, ethnically diverse city such as Los Angeles. It's always better to get a more accurate picture from a native or long-time resident. Depending on where you are in L.A., besides English and Spanish -- On any given day you can run into and over hear people speaking Russian, Cantonese, Mandarin, Tagalog, Farsi, Polish, Vietnamese, Portuguese, Chamorro, Hindi, Thai, Tongan, Japanese, Armenian, Cambodian, Amharic, etc. Sure there are many Spanish speakers in L.A., but to implicate that Spanish is the official language of L.A. is like a slap in the face, you are basically discounting the millions of other non-Spanish speakers in the L.A. metro. Heck, even many Latinos speak English to each other.

When I visited Birmingham, England two years ago. I ran into more people speaking Hindi than I did English. So does that make Hindi the official language of Birmingham? Don't count on it...not even in your wettest, wet dreams! :)

Try telling someone from Sao Paulo, Brazil if Japanese and not Portuguese is their official language and see if someone doesn't kick you to the ground and bust some Brazilian Jiujitsu on your ass. Sao Paulo has the largest Japanese population outside of Japan but would you know?

Impressions are really all relative, depending on which parts of the city one visits -- which could be said for every other large, multi-cultural city on the planet. But ignorance is bliss, huh? :lol:

In my experience, Spanish is closer to being the official language in Miami than it is in LA.

Que?

^ Huey Mamon! :hilarious

Hola amigos!! I am from Montevideo, Uruguay and I visited LA for the first time this year, in January. I felt really amazed about how latin LA is in certain areas. In some nieighbourhoods it seems you are in Mexico, you only hear Spanish and you turn on the radio and you have like 6 or 7 FMs broadcasting in Spanish for all the latin community. It is just incredible. Anyway, LA is so multicultural that I think English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Armenian, Russian, etc, etc, should all be official languages. Hi to all of you from south South America, Gerard.

Hola amigos!! I am from Montevideo, Uruguay and I visited LA for the first time this year, in January. I felt really amazed about how latin LA is in certain areas. In some nieighbourhoods it seems you are in Mexico, you only hear Spanish and you turn on the radio and you have like 6 or 7 FMs broadcasting in Spanish for all the latin community. It is just incredible. Anyway, LA is so multicultural that I think English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Armenian, Russian, etc, etc, should all be official languages. Hi to all of you from south South America, Gerard.

Very true about LA's multiculturalism. And it's not just LA but also sub-cities such as Santa Monica or Culver City.

I was in Downtown a while ago. I heard more Spanish especially in the Historic Core district.

English and Farsi/Hebrew dominate the westside and the Westwood/Brentwood/BV Hills and parts of Fairfax areas. Spanish dominates a lot of South (Central) and East L.A. English and Spanish are spread in the SFV and Farsi/Hebrew can be found in south SFV. Long Beach is all mixed. South Bay is pretty much all English. SGV has a good mix of everything, probably not Farsi/Hebrew so much.

The Asian languages are kinda all mixed in.

That's how I see LA, but what I notice may be different from what is facts. Ferney will have something to criticize about what I said anyways.

So no, Spanish isn't really the official language, though I don't think English should be either. Well, I guess it should because it annoys me when you see billboards in Spanish-I feel like I'm in Mexico, yet I'm only 10 miles form my house. I feel that if these illegal immigrants want to be accepted into society, they should first learn English-LA lifestyles shouldn't change because of them. Even the DMV book is printed in both English and Spanish. That's crazy. I bet if we went to Mexico, they wouldn't have one in English for us.

I think the DMV is like voter registration forms are printed in like 5 or 6 different languages.

que ondas guey? :cheers: salud!

spanish maybe heard more often in certain areas of the city, but making it the offical language of L.A.? hardly...there's so much more.

[quote=ArchiTennis;16899217]que ondas guey? :cheers: salud!



^ Salud con leche! :lol:

edit!

^^Ferney, you moved?

yeahh....Impressions are really all relative !

Visitors might get that impression. Scratch the surface and you hear a United Nations of languages in a single day, many of them with 0,000's of speakers. Lots of Slavic speakers around Fairfax. Plenty of Hebrew in Westwood. K-town and China town neighborhoods are known throughout the world. Only in LA have I learnt some Armenian words as well. These communities are no where near as large as Latinos, they dont have their own Univision 34 or as many radio stations. But to suggest that Spanish is the major official language of the city does a disservice to all the many other ethnic groups throughout the city. Oh yeah, I hear a fair bit of English on the streets, malls and cafes as well. Anyone else notice that? :)

there is actually a Bill that goes for that to make it official..
i think it is a good idea... because Spanish is such a beutiful language.. not like english Boring and Regular... spanish would give the city like a totaly different sense... but SOO....

and ofcourse people who dont speak spanish would say NO WAY... because come on.. DUH!!!.

come on the NAME los angeles Is In Spanish...
so what.. about the the places where english dominates..
practically eveywhere there is spanish !!
EAST LA.. so rich in culture(Mexican).... and West Lake and West side. so rich in Central American Cultures.... and The Valley filled with south American Culture

it would be aweosme if Like the UNited States had two official Languages.. like english and Spanish

like Canada.. with French and English...


SO what if English speakers dont know who to read or write spanish

it would give them the will to learn to do so... like the Hundread of THOUSANDS of Spanish speakers who read and right both English and Spanish.......

The Spanish language is such an integral part of the city and no one could imagine an LA without it. It's just one piece of many that makes this city what it is.

The times I've run into the most foreign languages were usually at the Chinese Theatre. Yap yap yap! Also, the highest variety of perfumes. :)

I vote no. In a given day I am likely to hear Chinese, Farsi, Hebrew, Tagolog, Vietnamese, Russian, Hindi, Armenian, and Urdu in addition to Spanish. We need one language to unit us and for better or worse that language is English. It is a myth that Latinos don't learn English. By second generation they are virutually all fluent English speakers just like every other immigrant group that has ever come to this country. We need to make allowances for all non English speakers living in this multicultural city but we shouldn't favor Spanish, in ten years maybe the major language spoken by immigrants may be Chinese.

This is an important topic, and it all leads to communication. Oral communication wasn't considered 'culture' when first established. Cultural it may be, but language was designed to be, first and foremost, communication. Culture comes in a distant second. This goes for the entire country. A single language should unite us all, and put us on the same page. We don't understand one another much as it is. Why should we consider becoming a multi-lingual nation? Screw that! Come here, learn the language. I'm not saying that it should be 'official' yet, because of the legal ramifications involved, the paperwork and the disadvantage it can put people in. I'm just saying "Come to America, learn the language."

English is from England
Spanish from SPAIN

America is LIke different Languages

It's not like I only hear Spanish...
Yes Spanish is big in Los Angeles but that's only with the Spanish-speaking community.

.. I totaly agree .. LA should BE Spanish!!!

let the English Only SPeakers LEARN it

^^ You're funny. I'll learn it, and I'll never use it http://easyfreesmileys.com/smileys/free-fighting-smileys-394.gif (http://easyfreesmileys.com/)

¿Que?

Si!

Vamos pues! Entonces? Que ondas con este "thread"?

I guess...if you really think about it...most people in L.A. speak Spanglish.

and in the UNITED STATES THE MAJORITY WINS

Los Estados Unidos son una Republica, vatos! Now, escapese muchachos http://easyfreesmileys.com/smileys/free-character-smileys-182.gif (http://easyfreesmileys.com/)

I am Latino, my native language is not English, it's Spanish, I speak 5 languages, and I don't understand why people want to impose a language over another, whether Spanish, English, Russian, Chinese, etc. I see more Spanish-speaking people in this crusade to make Spanish official nationwide than any other group. Come on! English is not even the official language in most US cities, why should Spanish?

Chinese, vietnamese, russians, Koreans which are also considerable populations do not intend to proselytize their languages to be spoken. These people bother to learn a language with different characters and grammar everywhere they go, and do not go whining for discrimination.

In different waves of immigrants in US, Italians and Germans came to this country, learned English, and enrich American culture with their foods, values, and language through their words and expressions. I believe Spanish-speaking people should follow the same direction like their predecessors. I talked to my fellow Latinos, with different backgrounds, about this issue, and the majority of them do not welcome this proposal, so it is not an "No-for English speaking only".

It would be illogical to declare Spanish the official language just because the name of the city is in Spanish. If we follow that statement, it supposes Des Moines, St. Louis, Baton Rouge should declare French as their official languages?

I am not against of speaking Spanish. In fact, I proudly speak Spanish whenever I have the chance. Sometimes I speak more Spanish during my day than I do in English, but I feel very glad to be able to communicate with an Asian or Middle Eastern in English, and through English interchange our ideas and know more about each other. If they do want to speak to me in Spanish, I am very welcome to converse with them. Basic state, federal, and city services must serve other languages including Spanish to reach elderly and disadvantaged populations who really cannot speak English. The same is for companies that offer services in other languages to appeal more these populations and make sure their message was effectively transmitted.

One of the best things in cities like LA, NY, SF, Chicago is you hear on the bus, subway, street vendors, etc speaking different languages.

As the same reason I oppose of declaring Spanish official, I consider wrong to be fired at work or be discrimated somewhere else just because you speak your native language. We are in America, which means freedom of speech, religion, language and culture.

I read in many threads dealing with this issue when giving Canada as bilingual country. Canada was founded by British and French people, each one concentrating in regions. That population became homogeneous for centuries having an important role in political history of Canada, and latter immigrants coming to this country had to speak the language of the settlers. That is the main reason of the bilingual status in Canada. The same would occur if Puerto Rico becomes US state. It would be absurd to impose Puerto Ricans speaking English and abandoning their Spanish heritage, plus Puerto Rican population is not diversified and heterogeneous so becoming Spanish official would make sense in this case.

Finally, I conclude we, latinos, probably be the major-minority group in many US areas, but declaring Spanish is like saying to other immigrant groups "Look guys we are immigrants the same as you are, but we have more privileges because we say so, so you should speak our language recently declared official, not yours." especially in a city so diversified like LA

No need to get your panties all bundled up. From my understanding, it was never an "official" proposal. But, yeah, I can appreciate your opinion. It would be dumb for people NOT to learn english, especially if you are considering staying in a majority English speaking country. However, I am completely against people being FORCED to learn english. I mean, not to long ago, I think it was on MSNBC where one restaurant owner decided to post a sign that said: "This is America: WHEN ORDERING 'PLEASE SPEAK ENGLISH.'" Some dumb (most likely racist) restaurant owner in Philadelphia.

http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee192/trolltoast/Genos20Steaks.jpg
'Speak English' signs allowed at Philly shop
Commission on Human Rights rules Geno's postings do not discriminate

updated 5:27 p.m. PT, Wed., March. 19, 2008
PHILADELPHIA - The owner of a famous cheesesteak shop did not discriminate when he posted signs asking customers to speak English, a city panel ruled Wednesday.

In a 2-1 vote, a Commission on Human Relations panel found that two signs at Geno's Steaks telling customers, "This is America: WHEN ORDERING 'PLEASE SPEAK ENGLISH,'" do not violate the city's Fair Practices Ordinance.

Shop owner Joe Vento has said he posted the signs in October 2005 because of concerns over immigration reform and an increasing number of people in the area who could not order in English.

Vento has said he never refused service to anyone because they couldn't speak English. But critics argued that the signs discourage customers of certain backgrounds from eating at the shop.

Commissioners Roxanne E. Covington and Burt Siegel voted to dismiss the complaint, finding that the sign does not communicate that business will be "refused, withheld or denied."

In a dissenting opinion, Commissioner Joseph J. Centeno said he thought the signs did discourage some customers.

"The sign appeared immediately above another sign that had the following words: 'Management Reserves the Right to Refuse Service,'" Centeno wrote.

New immigrants in Italian neighborhood
Geno's and its chief rival across the street, Pat's King of Steaks, are two of the city's best known cheesesteak venues. A growing number of Asian and Latin American immigrants have moved into the traditionally Italian neighborhood in recent years.

Vento had threatened to go to court if he lost. His attorney, Albert G. Weiss, said he was "pleasantly surprised" by Wednesday's decision.

"We expected that this was not going to go our way," Weiss said.

In February 2007, the commission found probable cause against Geno's for discrimination, alleging that the policy discourages customers of certain backgrounds from eating there.

The case went to a public hearing, where an attorney for the commission argued that the sign was about intimidation, not political speech. The matter then went to the three-member panel for a ruling.

W. Nick Taliaferro, the commission's executive director, said he would not appeal. MSNBC

Umm, how effective is a sign that is aimed at those who do not speak English, when the sign is written in English?

Umm, how effective is a sign that is aimed at those who do not speak English, when the sign is written in English?

Lulz

It would be funny if someone actually learned English only to read a sign telling them to learn English.

LAUSD talking about speaking more Chinese
To help students compete globally, new classes might be offered
By Naush Boghossian, Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 03/29/2008 10:16:18 PM PDT
http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee192/trolltoast/FE_DA_071022china.jpg usnews.com

Acknowledging the growing force of globalization, the Los Angeles Unified School District is gearing up an ambitious program to offer Mandarin Chinese language and culture courses at all of its middle and high schools.
The plan, which will go to the board next month, calls for the courses to be offered at about 200 middle and high schools, and each of the LAUSD's eight local districts also would have at least one dual-immersion program in which students started studying the language in kindergarten.

The move would be one of the largest of its kind in the nation and would put Los Angeles Unified on the cutting edge of language and culture instruction in public schools.

Superintendent David Brewer III touted the plan at a Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce luncheon last week. He called it "embarrassing" in his years as an admiral that the U.S. Navy is the only one in the world whose sailors speak just one language.

"It's arrogance. Every student in China is taking English classes," he said.

LAUSD has been working for the past 18 months with Mandarin in the Schools - a local panel created by a prominent national nonpartisan Chinese-American organization called the Committee of 100 - on how to expand the classes in Los Angeles schools.

Representatives of Los Angeles city government, LAUSD and California State University, Los Angeles, are among members of the panel, which plans to launch a campaign to help recruit teachers and raise community awareness of the program.
School board member Yolie Flores Aguilar is sponsoring a resolution for the program, which proposes requiring at least one high school in each of the eight local districts to offer Chinese language and culture courses in the 2008-09 school year.

About 713 of 700,000 students in the district take Mandarin courses at the 14 schools that now offer the language. By 2009-10, each local district would have at least one high school, one middle school and one elementary school class offering a Mandarin language and culture program.

Starting in 2010, local districts that already had Mandarin classes would increase grade levels involved, and courses would be added at new sites.

"It's important because we - not just here in California and in L.A., but across the nation - are significantly falling behind other countries in terms of our abilities to manage in a global economy," Aguilar said.

"I don't think we have a second to spare. The rapidness of the economy in terms of moving in a global direction is not something we should take lightly, and there's no reason to wait."

The nation's second largest school district already offers instruction in foreign languages - including German, Italian, Japanese and Russian - and in American Sign Language to about 77,000 secondary students.

Only one school offers a dual-language program in Mandarin, while 24 offer such programs in Spanish and eight in Korean.

Harry Haskell, director of world languages and cultures at LAUSD, said it's critical that U.S. schools make Mandarin more available.

"Mandarin is and will continue to be a very critical language," Haskell said. "We're realizing right now that because of globalization, it's vital that we have second-language skills because we have to compete with the rest of the world.

"And we are not."

Stewart Kwoh, vice chairman of the Committee of 100, said the Mandarin in Schools committee will work to recruit teachers from among Mandarin speakers in the greater Los Angeles area, which boasts the largest concentration of Chinese-Americans in the United States.

"There are about 200million Chinese learning English, and less than 50,000 Americans learning Mandarin," said Kwoh, who also is executive director of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California.

"We felt that it was very important for American youth to be able to learn Mandarin to be able to compete in the global marketplace, to understand a fast-growing country and its culture, and to be able to converse on the world stage with Chinese being one of the most widely used languages of the world."

Kwoh said he thinks there will be a demand for the courses, noting the number of students taking Mandarin doubled in one year when the district brought in four guest teachers from China.

"If the school board adopts this plan, Los Angeles would be a pacesetter in the country in terms of aggressiveness of a plan to broaden Mandarin programs," Kwoh said. "This is a very aggressive plan."

School districts in cities including Chicago, New York, Washington D.C., Seattle and Portland, Ore., are already offering Mandarin from kindergarten through grade12.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa long has emphasized the need for students to be proficient in more than one language to remain competitive in a growing world economy.

And he has repeatedly mentioned that his son took a one-month summer course to learn Mandarin.

"In a global work force, knowing a second language like Chinese or Spanish will be critical to our children's success," Villaraigosa said.

"It's encouraging that the LAUSD leadership recognizes this and is making the commitment now to provide our students every opportunity possible."

Kay Kei-ho Pih, assistant professor in the sociology department of California State University, Northridge, said demand for Mandarin courses has surged in recent years.

And he said that while English will remain the primary language in the global economy for the foreseeable future, the ability to read and speak Chinese will become increasingly important.

"We are very ethnocentric in how we view the world - as demonstrated by a lack of knowledge of international affairs," Pih said. "It's a very practical measure, as China is the No.1 trade partner of the U.S.

"It's very important for American kids to learn not just Chinese, but a foreign language."
Daily News

For many immigrants in the Valley, life continues as it did in their native countries http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee192/trolltoast/20080713_112300_ramirez-family_GALL.gifBy Tony Castro
07/13/2008 11:27:34 PM PDT
Edwin Ramirez and his wife Marybell eat pupusas at a restaurant in Pacoima Michael Owen Baker

PACOIMA - The Mexican ranchero music blaring from the corner jukebox drowned out most of what the afternoon lunch crowd at La Costa Azul restaurant was saying.

It could have been any one of thousands of Mexican diners throughout Los Angeles: Mirrored advertisements for Corona Extra, Tecate and Budweiser. A painting of the Virgen de Guadalupe and another of her discoverer St. Juan Diego. Votive candles above the shelves of glasses.

And the day's shrimp specials chalked on a board: Camarones Rancheros. Camarones al Mojo de Alo. Camarones a la Diabla. Camarones Empanizados. Camarones Ahogados. Camarones Imperiales. Camarones a la Plancha.

"You can now live in some communities in America and live your entire life as if you were still in Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras," Pacoima neighborhood activist Edwin Ramirez says while munching one of La Costa Azul's house specialties.

But there is no hint of braggadocio in his observation. Instead, there is a sense of ironic sadness and lament.

"I straddle two worlds - and they are both my own," says Ramirez. "Culturally, it's good that Spanish is spoken universally in a lot of communities like Pacoima. But it's not good when it doesn't allow you to assimilate into the new society. There are people here (from Central America) who have been here since the 1970s whose English is still worse than that of kindergartners.

"They've never had to learn English, and what you end up with is a large population that is dependent on the system for translators when they are exposed to the outside American society, and that's a cost we have to bear."
Staying Mexican

When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger complained last year to a convention of Latino journalists that Mexican and Central American immigrants were "staying Mexican" because they weren't learning English, he just may have been talking about much of the Northeast San Fernando Valley.

Today in Pacoima, Sun Valley and other areas of the Northeast Valley, Latino immigrants can do everything from shop and work to service their vehicles and get health care - all without having to learn English or interact with non-Latinos.

On one spring afternoon, Ramirez unloaded his 5-month-old daughter Alexandra from his black Volkswagen in front of La Costa Azul on Laurel Canyon Boulevard and surveyed the neighborhood.

The old El Tigre market and tortilleria building is across the street, which is lined with businesses such as Raspada Xpress, Golfo de Fonseca Mexican restaurant, a hardware store offering "servicios cellulares prepagados" - prepaid cell phones - and Vigo Envios de Dinero, where each week immigrants send money to relatives back home.

Walk into any of these businesses and the first language - often the only language - spoken is Spanish.

In La Costa Azul, the Salvadoran-born Ramirez and his lunch partner are the only ones who speak English during an entire afternoon.

Too dependent?

Ramirez, who along with three generations of his family has lived in the United States for three decades, comfortably drifts into Spanish with Latino neighbors who greet him.

"I've felt and I've had differences with my wife about it - that Latinos are being pampered," says Ramirez. "We're being catered to. We're being made more and more dependent because there's always a service for everything that we need.

"Not just Latinos, but in general, the government has spent too much money on services that turn people into being more dependent. There's no reason to fight for anything if you're getting what you need."

Pacoima and the surrounding Northeast Valley are growing evidence of how Central American and Mexican immigrants are increasingly forming linguistic, cultural, economic and sometimes even political enclaves outside the traditional American mainstream.

But experts and educators say that is no different than the ethnic pockets American cities have always fostered - Little Italy in New York, the Irish community in South Boston, Chinatowns in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

"The Spanish-speaking community remains intact because it's constantly being replenished through new immigration," says Rachel Moran, director of the Institute for the Study of Social Change at the University of California at Berkeley.

It is that ongoing immigration, say experts, that also tends to perpetuate the perception of a dual society and overshadows the assimilation of many longer-standing immigrants like the Ramirez family.

From the day they stepped foot in the San Fernando Valley in the 1970s, the Ramirez family members immersed themselves in assimilating into the dominant culture of their adopted homeland.

They learned English at night school and entered the long route toward citizenship. They built two successful small businesses. Edwin Ramirez helped found two charter schools in Pacoima that his son attended.

Ramirez himself became a parents' leader at the schools and in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Smitten with community activism, in the 1990s he turned to work in former Mayor Richard Riordan's charter reform movement meant to empower local neighborhoods.

"I believed in Mayor Riordan's idea of neighborhood councils and dedicated myself to passage of charter reform," says Ramirez, who then became a founder of the Pacoima Neighborhood Council and eventually its president.

Dual society

But day after day, Ramirez himself must reconcile his and his family's Americanization with the reality in which he lives.

"It's very complicated," says Stanford history professor Al Camarillo of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. "To say there's not assimilation because they're close to their home country is just a gross generalization. That's not to say there's not some validity to saying that, but this is a very large group of people.

"Immigrants tend to live in immigrant neighborhoods, and that reinforces language use and Mexican national identity. But that's not true for everyone."

A recent study by the Manhattan Institute found that Mexican and Central American immigrants - especially those in the country illegally - had among the lowest assimilation rates of all immigrants.

But it also found that while there may be a general appearance of a dual society in some communities, there also is a slow-but-steady move toward assimilation.

The longer immigrants live in the United States, the study concluded, the more characteristics of native citizens they tend to take on.

"This is something unprecedented in U.S. history," says professor Jacob L. Vigdor of Duke University, author of the study. "It shows that the nation's capacity to assimilate new immigrants is strong."

Consider these findings from the latest U.S. Census Bureau:

Most Latino immigrants learn and speak English quite well. Only about 2.5 percent of American residents speak only Spanish. The majority of residents of Spanish-speaking households speak English "very well."

Only 7 percent of the children of Latino immigrants speak Spanish as a primary language, and virtually none of their children do.

Immigrants share the traditional value that the family is the core social unit in the U.S. Some 62 percent of immigrants over age 15 are married, compared to 52 percent of natives.

The majority of Latinos who entered the U.S. before 1980 have become citizens, and the majority of immigrants also own their own homes.

At a table near the front window of La Costa Azul recently, several Latino men debated the merits of a new American-made pickup versus an import.

Near the back, Luz and Herman Garcia planned their daughter's quincea era over lunch and concerns about their daughter's dreams.

"Our daughter seems more interested in her cheerleading than she does in her quincea era," says Luz. "She's a teenager. Her goal is to move to Texas and become a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader."

At another table, two plumbers shared a large plate of Camarones a la Plancha while talking about the previous night's Dodgers game.

"Latinos," says Los Angeles author Joel Kotkin, an Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation, "represent the city's grass-roots future - from its aspiring working class to a rapidly growing middle class.

"They are the city's emerging majority. Their ownership of small businesses has exploded, increasing nearly fivefold since the 1980s. They constitute the majority of new homebuyers in many Southland communities.

"Few can deny that, ultimately, Latinos - their music, their cultural values and political sensibilities - will reshape the essence of Los Angeles in the new century."

And while it may not appear that Edwin Ramirez and his family typify the stereotype of the immigrant experience in America, they fit the image that emerges from census data.

"You should not come here and expect to live the same way you lived where you came from," says Ramirez. "There's nothing wrong with keeping your culture. You keep your culture. You keep your roots.

"But you cannot have the same life. You have to be part of your new community."

Ramirez says he knew that the day he arrived in the U.S.

Man of the house

"When I first came to America, I was working days and going to school at night," he says. "I was translating everything that came to the house (because) my mom had a hard time learning English. My brother and my sisters were too young.

"My sisters went to school. My brother went to work - his choice. I didn't have much of a choice. I became the man of the house. I was the oldest and the responsibility fell upon me."

In time, he and his brother built their own gardening and packaging businesses, while also making sure their sisters finished school.

"For a long time, I've believed that change will come from within," says Ramirez. "That if I do things different, I'll force you to do things different, better. That you can make a difference and that it's important to be a role model, especially for those you love."

Three years ago, Ramirez, his wife Marybell - a teacher at Pacoima Middle School - and his son Ivan moved into their own home, where they now often entertain family and friends with carne asada cookouts in their spacious backyard.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, Ivan had just returned home after his sophomore year at Lewis & Clark College, and held his baby sister as his father welcomed guests and kept an eye on the grill.

"I grew up sometimes living in a single room, just me and my dad, because of financial burdens and just tough times," says Ivan. "And now we have this beautiful house, a beautiful family, and I'm going to college.

"So I do realize the sacrifices my dad has made for me now more than ever."

Nearby, his father smiled with approval.

"Why do parents in the country work so hard and sacrifice?" he asks rhetorically. "For our children. It's our hope that they'll have opportunities we didn't.

"There are no regrets. There is only greater hope."

tony.castro@dailynews.com 818-713-3761The Daily News

I don't know about being the official language, but I know if you work retail or sales in certain areas of the city, it's pretty much a requirement to have at least a working knowledge of Spanish. I have a friend who manages a shoe store in echo park and he's not hispanic, he's Filipino like me, but all his employees are hispanic and all his customers are hispanic