FOREIGN LANGUAGES ABOUND IN A REGION IN TRANSITION.

Byline: Lisa M. Sodders Staff Writer

PACOIMA - When Diana Perez was a young girl, relatives visiting from Mexico would often take her - but not her four siblings - when they traveled to Las Vegas and other places.

Perez got to go because not only was she bilingual, but she could translate rapidly between the two languages for her Spanish-speaking relatives.

Today, Perez, 28, speaks English on the job as a receptionist/translator at Project GRAD Los Angeles, and almost exclusively in Spanish at home. Her husband, Jorge, 28, was born in Glendale, but was raised in Mexico and prefers to speak in Spanish. Their daughter, Anahi, 4, speaks English at school, but mostly Spanish at home.

``She's probably going to be able to translate,'' Perez said, ``but not as fast as I can.''

According to 2000 Census data released Tuesday, the Perez family is comfortably in the majority. English-only households account for 45 percent of those in Los Angeles County and 42 percent in the city of Los Angeles. That compares with 1990 figures of 54.6 percent in the county and 50.1 percent in the city.

``This data isn't surprising to me,'' said James Allen, professor of geography at California State University, Northridge, and co-author with Eugene Turner of ``The Ethnic Quilt: Population Diversity in Southern California'' (1997.)

A critical element, Allen said, is that among those who speak languages other than English, about one-third in both the city and the county report speaking English less than ``very well.''

``What that means is that almost two-thirds do speak it well,'' Allen said. ``Many immigrant families, the mothers and fathers come speaking Vietnamese, Chinese or Spanish, and the young kids who have grown up here will be better in English than the language of their parents.''

Allen attributed the drop in the percentage of English-only households to the sheer numbers of immigrants who moved to the area in the 1990s. In 2000, 40.9 percent of city residents were foreign-born, compared with 38.4 percent in 1990.

But Allen said he thinks the language shift is a temporary phenomenon. Young people can pick up another language very quickly, and their bilingual skills can give them a boost when they enter the job market.

``If they come over into a new culture before the age of 12 or 13, they end up speaking the new language without an accent,'' Allen said.

Not surprisingly, schools, government agencies and businesses in Los Angeles have been adding multilingual employees.

The Gas Co. has a multilingual service center with customer service employees who speak Cantonese, Korean, Mandarin, Vietnamese and Spanish, spokeswoman Anne Silva said. There have been Spanish-speaking employees for more than 30 years, but the company started offering Cantonese, Korean, Mandarin and Vietnamese in 1986.

Forty-one percent of the students in the Los Angeles Unified School District speak a language other than English, and of those, 92 percent speak Spanish, said Esther Wong, assistant superintendent for planning, assessment and research.

The district has translators for the seven main languages - Spanish, Armenian, Korean, Tagalog, Cantonese, Vietnamese and Russian.

In 1992-93, the LAUSD identified 84 languages spoken in the district; today it's 93, Wong said.

In 1990, county election ballots were printed in five foreign languages: Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Tagalog and Vietnamese. Korean was added later.

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Photo:

Diana Perez helps her daughter, Anahi, 4, with her writing.

Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer