California's Language Woes: Possible solutions?

Dana

Just to add to my post - teaching English should start as soon as possible (in our case, it starts in your first year at school) I don't think it segregates society, since, in your case, English will serve as the bridge. Our government wants to introduce a policy where children who study in other languages than their own, will be graded differently. But this could lead to an artificial situation where students "perform" better than they really are. Where I work, people speak four different languages, but Afrikaans is the common language used (although everyone here can speak English too). You're right that it takes time to build a bilingual or multi-lingual society. In your case, English remains dominant, unlike here, where no language can claim to be the majority language.

Does LA have that distinct "city" feel that SF and NY have? (I'm ignorant -- the only time I was in LA was around 1965, and it didn't have it then.)

My Russian friends' son attended the private school where his parents taught the after-school program. Their regular classes were in English, although there were so many students from Russia that the kids tended to speak mostly Russian outside of classes. As a result (I think), my friends' son became completely fluent in English, but retained a strong Russian accent. He wasn't hampered by it, though.

The after-school program, by the way, was a great solution to another problem -- the husband of this couple was not gifted in languages and hadn't been fluent enough in English to get anything but menial jobs.

Deborah,

Well, it's pretty interesting about L.A....there isn't that traditional "urban" feel that SF and NY have, except for certain particular areas. L.A. is...well, a big ocean of people, spread out over what really are probably 20 different smaller cities rolled together. So it's pretty strange to ever call L.A. "the city." Hence, I always smile when I hear SF or NY referred to as such. =)

I'm pretty sure that people who live on the outskirts of L.A. refer to it as "the City". Whenever my bf and I visit his parents in Ontario (Calif), which is about 40 miles from downtown, but only 3 miles from the L.A. County border, they will say things like, "How's life in the City?" or "Are you guys heading back to the City?" But nobody living in L.A. actually calls it that.