Languages in LA

Little Armenia has their own web page, littlearmenia.com, a truly complete guide to Armenian restaurants, services, churches, etc in Hollywood, Los Feliz, Glendale, Burbank, and Weho. (Weho is West Hollywood, our me-too response to New York’s Soho district.)

Armenians are an interesting bunch for a mid-western white girl like myself. I peer at them often with fascination. This is a group that is in no danger whatsoever of forgetting their culture. Armenian students who cannot remember times tables can still recite every detail of the Armenian genocide. Let me tell you, they know when, where, who, how many, everything. There are Armenian rap songs about it, which they listen to and get fired up about every year around the anniversary of the event.

This in and of itself is not necessarily unique, many of my Hispanic students also show a marked preference for and loyalty to the country of their parents’ birth, and consider American culture of secondary importance. But Armenians, from what I have seen so far, are holding on to their culture without evincing hostility to American culture, which is not always the case with other nationalities.

When the protests erupted last year against pending anti-immigration laws, the latent hostility and frustration in the Hispanic population was manifest. My Mexican students were chanting Si Se Puede!! and waving Mexican flags and yelling “Viva la Raza!” (the sort of chant that only dark-skinned minorities are allowed to utter.) My Armenian students looked on with mild curiosity.

I don’t know if Armenian culture simply has no ax to grind with America, or if they feel compatible with white capitalist culture. But for whatever reason, Armenian-Americans are the benign face of multi-culturalism, where diversity means cool ethnic restaurants and traditional dances in exotic costumes. I confess, I like the Armenian vibe. It’s not threatening. I’m sure this means I’m a bourgeois pig.

Oh well.

Why is there, online, no linguistic map of Los Angeles? How can this be, with UCLA Center for World Languages right here, and all this diversity? I bet such a map would look like a crazy quilt put together by a schizophrenic… which would be way cool.

 Think about it, we have Little Armenia, Little Ethiopia, Thai town… we’ve got enclaves of Russian Jews and Koreatown… if nothing else, it should be a project for linguistics grad students to trudge all over L.A. finding out what language people speak. What a great fieldwork practice, and it’s right here, locally!

 
Boy, if I were a linguistics professor with a bunch of indentured gradslaves at my disposal, there’d be battalions of linguistics students out every year, canvassing a different part of L.A. … this city alone could make for a lifetime of linguistic publications. Hey! Let’s find out if there are any Rhodesians in the valley! Let’s find out if El Salvadorians mingle in with Hondurans, or keep themselves apart! Let’s find out what new arrivals to Koreatown think of the Korean language they encounter from those who’ve been here longer. Is Los Angeles Korean turning freaky? Where do the Latvians gather? Is there a Little Mozambique that I don’t know about, sandwiched between abandoned buildings in South Central? Where’s the New New Delhi? There’s gotta be one.

 Let’s look for little starter pidgins, doomed creatures that will never grow to be creoles: maybe there’s a street in Pasadena where Yemeni grandmothers have no one to talk to during the day but retired Peruvians, and they’ve developed some wild code that enables them to discuss soap operas and exchange recipes.

 Then let’s make a big map, multi-colored, with cross-hatching for blurring boarders, and links to pictures of Orthodox Jews scowling at the camera in front of Gelsen’s grocery in Beverly Hills. What? It’ll be fun!

This is funny: National Geographic has a list of cultural dos and don’ts for dealing with the natives here in Los Angeles. In case you’re visiting from, say Nairobi or New Guinea, and you want to know how to navigate the village without getting eaten by the locals. Not that anyone in L.A. is going to mess up their thousand-dollar teeth whitening procedures gnawing on some tourist. No indeed, you can chip a tooth on those cameras.

But anyway, here’s the first “cultural tip” from National Geographic:

Social etiquette. Business and personal interactions in Los Angeles are usually marked by a cheerful, breezy courtesy and lack of confrontation.

This is certainly true: no one confronts anything here. If they don’t like you, they kiss you enthusiastically, beam at you lovingly, and then don’t take your calls or answer your e-mails. But it’s bizarre to see it offered up in National Geographic. I feel like there should be a picture next to it of some Beverly Hills native with cold cream slathered all over her face like war paint. She should be in ceremonial spa dress (terry cloth robe, herbal tea potion in an earthenware pot nearby…)

But here’s one that’s totally wrong:Road Etiquette. Be as polite on the road as you would in person: Do not rely excessively on your horn, cut off other cars, tailgate, or—for your own protection—express road rage.

Au contraire, mon cher, you must do all three of things if you are going to blend in. Lay on that horn at every opportunity. This is the closest thing you’re going to get to honest communication in this town. The nicer Los Angelenos are in person, the more vicious they are behind the wheel, where foam drips from their whitened fangs.

Just remember that, once you hand your keys to the valet, you have to be nice again. Big white smile: call me! We’ll do lunch!

Due to my long hunt for my new apartment, I am now so emotionally scarred that I lash out at the very mention of the word “trendy.”

What on earth do people mean when they say trendy? I mean, seriously? Is this like upscale which means everything from middle-aged and stodgy to not-quite-paid-for?

You would not B.E.L.I.E.V.E. the apartments I have seen referred to as trendy. Apparently, the adjective trendy can be applied to any of apartment that meets the following criteria:

Vertical blinds

Has a bar

Bars on windows have curly-ques on them

Asymmetrical roof

Designed by cartoonist fired from The Jetsons back in 1967

Any manifestation of the colors pink, orange, or turquoise

Retro

Shag carpet

Mirrored surfaces

Located in an area mostly frequented by gays. - Now look. I am not hating on gays. But just because you guys live nearby doesn’t make it automatically cool, okay? I’m sorry! But there you have it! One dog don’t make it a kennel, dig?

Near organic healthfood store. - Now look. I am not hating on vegetarians. But just because you guys live nearby…

Trendy is quickly becoming the zany of video-rental criteria. That is to say, if I am browsing through the video store and I pick up a video and read the back, the minute I see words like wacky, zany… I put it down. Those are code words for “juvenile.” Now I apply the same guidelines to the apartment rental quest. Trendy=hideous. Okay. Got it.

I’m cleaving toward words like quaint and quiet now. I mean, how can you go wrong with those? Oh, I know. We’ll find out.

Okay, do not tell anyone I told you this, but I sometimes go to façade.com and run a stichomancy request. Hey, it’s free.

Stichomancy is when some computer generates a random excerpt from a random book and tells you…

I don’t believe I’m saying this. This is California influence for sure. I’d have never fallen for such nonsense in stiff-upper-lip Michigan.

Anyway, it tells you that you should meditate (…oh please, like I’ve ever meditated in my life. The closest I come to meditation is that trance I fall into whenever Keanu is on the silver screen. I don’t believe I told you that, either. But there’s something about him. Anyway, it tells you that you should meditate) on the following passage.

So this is what my stichomancy said today, and I looked at it, and suddenly I thought, “Dang, lookee here, if this ain’t some deep shi-at.”

It’s an excerpt from John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address. You remember JFK? He was a Democrat from back when Democrats were actually pro-America?

…final war.

So let us begin anew. . .remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate…

Well, heck, that’s enough to set me brooding till November. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but never fear to negotiate. That in and of itself is a headful. That could well last me the rest of my life.

I wrote a screenplay and it has a director and producer attached. We are trying to find funding. Meanwhile, a nearly-nuclear Iran has come to visit Columbia University. These two things put together are a stichomatic moment: I want to get a good deal on my script, in case some nutjob doesn’t end the world, and I am forced to deal with continued life.

Wow. That’s just too much, all put together. I think I’ll go watch Keanu. Look at that mouth. Mmm…

It’s funny the ejaculations we punctuate our speech with. “God, I can’t stand this!” or “Man, you should have seen him run.” Then there’s “Boy, I’d hate to be there right now.”

 
Sometimes it’s hard to tell when someone is being addressed and when it’s merely an emphatic start. It can be a little tricky sometimes. I remember once in the military saying to a co-worker (who was black), “Boy, those stairs look awful.”

 
He snapped “Who you callin’ boy?”

I said, “Huh?” (witty comebacks are my specialty.)

He said, “You better look again!”

 
Once I figured out what was going on, I said with my characteristic grace and good nature, “Oh Christ, if I’d said God, these stairs are a mess would you have thought I was praying to you??”

 
So we didn’t become friends. But it’s something that came floating up from my memory bank the other day when a young co-worker said to me, “Dude, I was so drunk last night.”

 
I thought “Dude?? Am I that flat-chested?” But I didn’t react outwardly. I’m pretty sure she knows I’m female. Now I’m just left to wonder, is dude the new guy or the new boy?

 
See, guy has become standard, already, even when addressing an all-female group. “Come on, you guys, we’re missing the previews!” is perfectly acceptable to hurl at your female friends now as they dawdle in the parking garage. But it’s actually an address.

 
Then there’s the non-address exclamation, boy, as in (and my own sainted mother used to mutter it to me after parent-teacher conference night) “Boy, if I ever see another report card like that again, you’re gonna be sorry!”

So. Is dude a guy or a boy? Or is my co-worker just weird?

That’s meant to be a pun on lingua franca, but because I don’t speak a bit of Latin, I probably just said something risque about monks by accident. Oh well. A lingua franca is  a common language used by people who might not speak one another’s tongue. I hear it  in my classrooms, when my Thai girls speak in halting English to my Urdu-speaker, because it’s the only mutual code they can access.

 
But what I’m pondering today is something I’ve noticed in my continued window-shopping for the perfect West Hollywood apartment. There are areas in Los Angeles that are veritable enclaves of non-English speakers. In particular, I’m finding a lot of Russian and Armenian neighborhoods where, even as I poke around the courtyards of units-for-rent, I hear conversations through open windows and in little backyards that are conducted entirely in another language.

 
I remember dating a Russian fellow from New York who showed me entire areas of the Bronx where three generations have come to adulthood speaking only Russian. They stay in their neighborhood, and they have everything they need. There is no pressing reason to learn English.

 
I feel sure that Los Angeles offers similar enclaves, but I notice that on all the answering machines I’ve encountered so far in my quest to view apartments, the messages are always in English. Heavily-accented English, perhaps, but English.

 
This is encouraging. It suggests an openness to let others into the enclave. I mean, if one were interested in making sure the 800 block of such-n-such street stays Russian, there is no simpler (legal) way to screen apartment applicants than to leave a message in Russian to scare off outsiders. But so far, no one seems to be doing it… not in West Hollywood, anyway. And little things like that mean a lot to me.

Take a drive with me on a gorgeous Sunday morning, through the leafy sides streets of Hollywood. Here is the perfect way to spend the hours of 8am to noon if you’re one of those who pops awake at the break of dawn on your day off because your cats are like little furry alarm clocks with claws who don’t know what “weekend” means.

 
I’ll tell you what weekend means. It means following handlettered signs that say YARD SALE up Beachwood Drive, on the hunt for groups of people standing around, peering judiciously at lamps and boxes of CDs laid out on blankets in the small, landscaped yards of the apartment buildings leading up to the HOLLYWOOD sign.

 
Drive carefully, for Beachwood is rife with tourists who want their picture taken with the sign behind them, and they will stand right smack dab in the middle of the street for that picture, oblivious to the glares of the yard-saling locals who want to get to that pile of sequined throw pillows before that old Armenian lady making her way determinedly up the sidewalk, cane in one hand, purse in the other. She’s eyeballing those pillows and some putz from Tulsa is blocking my way. One more second and that’s going to be one hell of a picture (“Here’s Heather getting run down by some bitch! OMG!”)

 
After combing Beachwood, I like to head into Weho to Duke’s Diner, a seedy little place right next to Whiskey A-GoGo on Sunset Blvd. They have awesome huevos rancheros. For dessert, I take a drive up into the bird streets, and drool over the ultra expensive movie star homes that cling to the mountainside between Sunset and Mulholland Drive.  There’s always one for sale and open houses are on Sunday. We can go in, look around, and pretend we have $4 million lying around and are pondering an investment. Hm, ceiling’s a little cracked on this one…

 
To finish my morning, I go down to the corner of Gardner and Santa Monica Blvd to my favorite carwash, and listen to Dave Matthews “Crash Into Me” nice and loud as the suds pound my car. I come out with my ears ringing and my car glittering clean. Now it’s noon. Time to grade papers. Sigh. Until next Sunday.

I have noticed an odd habit amongst my students here in Los Angeles: they use the word racism to apply to actions and attitudes that have nothing to do with race. It’s basically a word they hurl whenever they wish to complain or comment on anything that they perceive as ill-treatment. 

When I ask for two volunteers to hand out books, 12 year olds will nearly jerk their arms out of the socket waving them in the air in a desperate bid for my attention. Naturally, not everyone can be chosen. But I have had several little boys exclaim, when I failed to chose them, “That’s RACIST!” 

The first time one said this, I was baffled. Since the majority of my students are Hispanic, and I had chosen two Hispanic volunteers to pass out the books, I said, “How was that racist?” 

Stoutly, the boy replied, “You never pick ME!” I mulled over this for a while. Then, as we were reading Flowers For Algernon, we came across the scene where Charlie’s co-workers mock him because he is mentally retarded. 

“Oh, that’s messed up,” said one girl, “That’s racist!” 

Then I understood: their concept of racism is a little shaky. Particularly given that they don’t hesitate to harass foreign students. (It took me several days to convince one boy that chanting “Ming wong dong! Ming wong dong!” to the pretty little Thai girl in the corner was an abysmal way to get her attention.) 

Even their concept of race seems incomplete. Upon seeing a scene from Gone With the Wind, one student noted the close-up of Scarlett’s tear-filled blue eyes. Suddenly he turned, looked at my blue eyes, and blurted with sudden comprehension, “Miss are you WHITE??” 

I still don’t know what he had thought I was up till that moment. I’m afraid to ask.

There are many guns in Hollywood, and I’ve stared down the barrel of about 20 of them since I moved here. Fortunately, they’re all two-dimensional. I’m talking about billboards. Hollywood for some three decades now has had a tendency to produce action movie billboards with a hero pointing his gun directly in the viewer’s face. He’s usually making eye contact, too, leaving no doubt in mind that it’s you he’d like to blow away.

 How this is meant to lure me closer, I’m not sure, but the film industry seems certain it will.

 Those billboards that don’t feature guns directly pointed at the viewer sometimes include a gun simply pointed away, Jodie Foster’s current The Brave One being an example.

 Occasionally, in the billboards, the viewer has the gun, which you can tell because some starlet is in your crosshairs. No wonder movie stars are scared of their fans. Half of them have faced us over a gun one way or another.

 The other oddity that seems particular to Los Angeles advertising is the plethora of bare buttocks one encounters on Sunset Blvd. And these are big billboards. Big buttocks! Joe’s Jeans has run a particularly infamous ad campaign advertising a product I haven’t seen yet because most of the billboards simply feature naked buttocks. One featured seven naked butts of varying hues all in a row. It was startling enough to make you run off the road. Fortunately it was at an intersection, so you could rest at the red light and take in the huge, butt-y rainbow at your leisure.

 I wonder why they don’t combine these two most-favored images. I haven’t seen a butt and a gun together since James Bond was a brunette. I suppose, however, that it’s only a matter of time.