Voices

In Los Angeles, among other ethnic groups, live Anglos, Latinos, Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Iranians, Arabs, Russians, French and Israelis, just to mention a few. They use their native or heritage languages mostly to communicate with each other within their ethnic group. In fact, these speakers and their languages are not erratically intermingled, but grouped by ethnicity in different geographical areas in the city. In this paper, I address the social and linguistic similarities and differences of the minority languages most widely spoken in Los Angeles, which is a geographical point of attraction and irradiation in Southern California. In fact, major ethnic and linguistic diversity in the Western United States is localized in Los Angeles.