Languages in LA

As everyone knows, there are a great many Hispanic speakers in Los Angeles. What I didn’t really understand till I moved here, however, is that they essentially comprise a fixed-stratum servant-class. It makes me uneasy to even say that. But there you have it: busboys, gardeners, construction workers, furniture movers, and valets here are by and large Mexican.

 One comes to expect it, eventually, and it brings its own quality of unease to daily living. There is always the specter of going to a social function, hearing someone speak Spanish, and assuming they are there to take your drink order, only to find out that they are a guest and you have just been branded an ignorant racist. But it’s hard to avoid sinking into such expectations. Every valet I meet is Hispanic. If I stay here much longer, I will eventually be trained to hand my car keys over to any Mexican who asks for them.

 Likewise, being home during the day and watching the gardeners and lawnboys come and go here in Weho, hearing male voices speaking Spanish outside my window has become quite normal. I didn’t realize how normal it was until yesterday, when I nearly lept off my couch in alarm at hearing a male voice speaking English outside my window.

 It took a moment to realize that the voice was discussing the possibility of moving a gate so the gas company employees who read the meters would be able to get to them with less difficulty. But it was so strange, to hear English in the province normally dominated by Spanish. Stranger still was my instinctive reaction. Already I am adjusted to the existence of this social stratum. I feel like a colonist. It’s very odd.