Latin lingo.

Surveyors working for the California Milk Processor Board recently gathered 40 bilingual Latino teen-agers from the greater Los Angeles area, assembled them in pairs in an interview room, and asked them questions about language and media.

The results were a little uncomfortable for those in the Spanish-language media and ad businesses.

Most of the teens said they speak Spanish at home, but prefer English at school and with friends. A majority preferred English-language television to Spanish, and said they find most Spanish-language commercials "cheesy" or "corny." When asked to recall their favorite commercials, they mentioned English spots for The Gap, Taco Bell and Old Navy, and the milk board's "Got Milk?" campaign.

That doesn't sound too promising for the Spanish TV networks, or radio stations, or the handful of large agencies in Los Angeles that create Spanish-language advertising. But then, it's a little unfair to make generalizations based on a survey of 40 kids -- and likely the survey wouldn't attract much attention at all except for the fact that it is one of the only efforts to date to measure the preferences of this key audience.

Currently there are 4.3 million Latinos between the ages of 12 and 19 in the United States, a number expected to grow 62 percent to 7 million by 2020. As a whole, the number of teens in the United States is expected to grow only 10 percent in that time frame.

For Jeff Manning, the Milk Processor Board's executive director, the results of the survey were something of a vindication. Manning ruffled quite a few feathers last summer after a Wall Street Journal article chronicled his decision to scrap an effort to develop a Spanish milk campaign targeting Latino teens, opting instead to run existing English milk commercials on Spanish television.

Univision Communications Inc. by far the biggest Spanish-language network, refused to run them, citing a policy against English commercials. No. 2 Telemundo wasn't wild about the idea either, but eventually agreed to carry them.

"The Spanish-language agencies are not that crazy about this study, because we're coming out and saying English is the language of choice for these teens," Manning said.

Spanish-language marketers point out that the survey, conducted by Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Cheskin Research, hardly constitutes a comprehensive look at the Latino teen audience. The company says it gathered "bicultural" teens, but what does that mean? How do the opinions of these "bicultural" teens relate to the opinions of the Latino teen population as a whole? And how representative can a sample of only 40 be, anyway?

Nonetheless, market research by local Spanish ad agencies does tend to show that Latino teens accept English media much more than their parents.

"A combination of English-language and Spanish-language programming will give you your best delivery of the Hispanic teen market," said Rochelle Newman, president of Latino marketing firm Enlace Communications Inc. in Brentwood.

Newman doesn't expect the results of the milk board's survey to have much impact on Spanish media, largely because few Spanish advertisers currently target teens -- most of them are trying to reach Latino mothers, seen as having most control over the family purse strings.

Of course, today's teen-agers will be grown in a few years and having even-more-assimilated kids of their own. But Newman says there will always be more new immigrants to fill the gap, ensuring a healthy future for Spanish media.

Assistant Managing Editor Dan Turner writes a weekly column on marketing for the Los Angeles Business Journal.