Languages in LA

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!