‘They Don’t Understand’ : When You Don’t Speak English, Sometimes the Simplest Task Can Become Herculean

S e habla espanol .

And Tagalog, Bengali, Lao, Samoan and Yiddish.

According to recent U.S Census figures, 1 in 7 people in Los Angeles County doesn’t speak English at home. Ditto for the rest of the United States.

What is it like to live in a land where English is the primary language, but you speak another?

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“You feel as if you are a child again.” --Imre Simko, 54, who speaks Hungarian.

Sitting in the pastor’s office at Alhambra’s Hungarian Baptist Church, Imre Simko struggles with English. He sweeps his hand over a military-style crew cut, shakes his head and continues in Hungarian. The Rev. Joseph Novak translates.

“When I emigrated to the United States three years ago, I felt that I did not need English. I surrounded myself with other Hungarians, which has made life easy for me, but learning English impossible,” says the divorced father of two daughters, who live in Hungary.

For Simko, who retired in 1989 from a 30-year military career that included heading a Hungarian anti-terrorist commando unit, life without English has been humbling.

“You feel as if you are a child again,” Simko says. He attends English classes three times a week at a local college. “I wish that someone could correct me, you know, as a mother does to a child. That is the best way to learn the language. Otherwise, you lose assurance in yourself, in your security.”

Last year, Simko obtained a work permit, left relatives in Modesto and moved to Alhambra, where he lives in a small apartment with his dog, Rita.

Not knowing English, he says, has made him a loner because it’s hard to communicate. Whenever he feels depressed, he reads his Bible, printed in Hungarian.

With Novak’s help--filling out job applications, taking phone calls--Simko landed work as a security guard this year.

Says Darin Williams, his boss: “He carries his dictionary with him all the time, he’s diligent about his studies and he’s a weapons expert. That was enough for us.”

Simko says he is not the “ideal employee because of my lack of English.” Then, he pauses and reconsiders. “Maybe I am ideal because as a security guard, I am alone. I don’t have to talk a lot.”

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“I know my ABCs.” --Phen Chiu, 11, who speaks Vietnamese and is teaching her family English while she learns.

“Sometimes I want to cry,” says fifth-grader Phen Chiu, “because I can’t say what I want to say in English. So I don’t say anything and that makes me sad.”

Chiu immigrated from Vietnam less than a year ago with her parents and three younger brothers. Her family lives in a one-room apartment near downtown Los Angeles. Her father works in a Vietnamese market; her mother is a homemaker.

Chiu attends Bellagio Road Newcomer School in Bel-Air, which helps immigrant students ease into school their first year in the United States.

“I’m the only one in my family going to school,” she says softly through Johnny Chan, a school district interpreter aide.

“I know my ABCs,” she offers and then ticks off the alphabet without Chan’s help. “It took me three months to learn it. Everyday after school I practiced.”

After school, she plays with Vietnamese-speaking friends and later watches English-language cartoons at home “because I want to learn more English.”

After dinner, she gathers her books and her brothers around her, flips through the pages and makes up stories to go with the pictures. And as is her ritual, she ends with the alphabet.

“I try to teach my father the alphabet, but he doesn’t listen,” she says, sighing. “I want to learn. I’m hard-working. I’m not scared. I want my brothers to learn English because everybody in America has to learn; otherwise you can’t live here.

“My father told me that he feels very sad because he can’t speak English. And my mother says to me to learn English, so when I grow up I can apply for a job with the government or with the city.”

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“If I take a walk and someone speaks to me in English, how can I know what they are saying? “--Carolina Yurewiez Klimavicine, who speaks Lithuanian, Polish, German and Russian. In her 70s, she has no plans to learn English.

If it weren’t for Draugas, Carolina Yurewiez Klimavicine says, “I’d be lost in the world.”

Yurewiez receives the Lithuanian-language newspaper, which is printed in Chicago, in her mailbox five days a week. It is her link to news here and abroad.

“Here’s an article on President Clinton,” she says in Lithuanian while sitting at her kitchen table, newspapers stacked on a chair. Her friend, Antanas Kalanta, translates.

Yurewiez says she never imagined spending her golden years in Los Angeles. “But it is meant to be.” She was, after all, born in the United States.

Yurewiez’ parents immigrated here in the early 1900s, settled in Chicago and had three daughters. After she was born, her family returned to Lithuania.

“I was a small girl,” she says. “Too young to have learned English.” Yurewiez graduated from college in Lithuania, survived World War II, married and reared two daughters and a son who still live there. She is widowed.

She remained there until 1978, when she repatriated to the United States, alone and eager to build a new life, which she says hasn’t been “all that difficult” without English. Because she also speaks Polish, German and Russian, she has always been able to communicate with someone.

“I feel more Lithuanian than American,” she says, adding that several of her Silver Lake neighbors are Lithuanian.

An Armenian woman who speaks Russian cleans her home. Yurewiez attends a church where Lithuanian is spoken. A friend who speaks Polish and English shops for her groceries. Another, who speaks Lithuanian and English, picks up her medicines. Saturday afternoons are spent listening to a Lithuanian radio program.

Still, Yurewiez says, life without English does have drawbacks. Especially when she ventures outside of her enclave. “If I take a walk and someone speaks to me in English, how can I know what they are saying? How can I answer them?”

She shrugs. “For 15 years I have lived this way. I have my friends. I mend my dresses. I have my books,” she says, pointing to her massive library of Polish, Russian and Lithuanian literature. And she has her newspapers.

“It is better for me to read my newspapers. When I get on the street, it’s a different world because it’s nothing but English out there. On these pages that is not a problem.”

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“We watch Spanish TV, listen to Spanish radio, go to Spanish movies.” --Jose Pech, 38, who speaks Spanish and “survival English.”

For 10 years Jose Pech has worked throughout Los Angeles as a carpenter and a painter. Along the way, he’s picked up enough English to land him work.

And, says the father of a 4-month-old boy, that’s all he really needs.

“My friends and I can make decent lives without English,” he says. “We have Spanish everywhere,” he says.

“When I’m at home or with friends, nobody speaks English. We watch Spanish TV, listen to Spanish radio, go to Spanish movies. We rent Spanish videos and we go to stores where everyone speaks Spanish. There are Spanish nightclubs and restaurants and Laundromats.”

Besides, Pech plans to return to Mexico, where he has has been sending money to his family.

Until then, he says, he is satisfied with making his own Spanish-language world here “so we don’t feel so lonely” without English. But sometimes--because he doesn’t speak English--life can be cruel, he says.

“Sometimes I’ll go to a store where they only speak English, and when I ask someone something, most of the time they won’t understand me. Sometimes they get angry. They don’t have patience. But if they don’t understand me, how can they help me? So I prefer to go where they only speak Spanish so I can be helped.”

But Pech says there is a higher price to be paid at mom-and-pop grocery stores specializing in Latino products. Food costs more, he says, because store owners “figure we don’t know how much things cost because we are from another country.”

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“I can read maps. I know enough English to order at the fast-food drive-through.” --Byung Ik Choe, 58, who speaks Korean. He plans to learn English when he retires.

“One is never too old to learn,” says Choe, who relies on his wife and two grown sons to translate at his dry-cleaning store. He eventually wants to learn but not now, “because I am busy making a living, trying to make a success here.”

In 1974 Choe and his family left Korea for Hawaii, where they lived for three years before moving to Los Angeles, he explains through his son, Scott Choe, 25.

The Choes settled in the Miracle Mile district and soon made themselves--and their tailoring talents--known to other Korean-speakers. For years they took in alterations at their home. Finally in 1981, after saving money for a dry-cleaning business, the dream came true.

Choe relied heavily on a younger brother whose command of English--though not perfect--maneuvered them through the legal work. A Korean-run bank took care of the finances.

Choe says he has no regrets about not having learned English. Life has been very good to him, his wife and sons, both of whom attend college and are bilingual.

“I can read maps. I know enough English to order at the fast-food drive-through. And I am grateful that customers don’t put me down when they realize I don’t speak English.”

If there is a business problem--dealing with the landlord and employees or ordering supplies--Scott is old enough and savvy enough to help, Choe says. And Sue Choe is proficient enough in English to help customers.

Still, Korean is the mother language at work and at home. Choe reads the Korea Times and watches his favorite TV soap opera, “The Wild Chrysanthemum.”

He also spends three to four hours viewing Korean-language videos that he rents 20 at a time to last the entire week. On Sunday he fishes with members of the Oriental Fishing Club.

“My son told me about the English-only movement,” Choe says. “I heard I wouldn’t see Korean words or documents in America. It will be a shame if that happens, which is why I want to learn English. But right now, not knowing English is not a big problem. That’s just the way my life is.”

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“It makes me happy when I learn a new word every day.” --David Arevshatyan, 11, who speaks Armenian and is learning English in school.

David Arevshatyan is never without his English-Armenian dictionary.

“It’s the most important book I have,” he says to Sofik Hagopine, an interpreter aide at Bellagio Road Newcomer School.

Arevshatyan’s parents and a 14-year-old sister, Lilit, moved to Hollywood five months ago after arriving in California from Armenia. “It makes me happy when I learn a new word every day. This week I learned the days of the week. Today is Friday.”

At school, the youngster forces himself to learn English “because it is the main language of California,” he says.

Neither his mother nor his father, who owned an auto mechanic shop in Armenia and is out of work, speak English well, “so we speak Armenian at home. My sister and I try to speak English to each other when we are together.”

When he goes to a nearby store, he says, “I don’t always understand. I don’t know how to answer. This is when I feel the most frustrated.”

Like other children who don’t speak English, Arevshatyan learns by watching TV. He says his favorite program, “Full House,” helps him with vocabulary. But he also realizes that school instruction will be his key to becoming trilingual. (He also wants to learn Russian, the second language of Armenia.)

“My father tells me to concentrate on English and math skills because I will need both to start a business. My mother says every day to sit and read a book--in English.”

He says his school friends--all of whom are newly arrived immigrants--help each other when they can’t get the words right.

“I know there are a lot of students who came to this country, and they didn’t speak English,” he says. “I think about these things and I get relieved. There is hope for me and my family.”

The Numbers Behind the Story

The following are U.S. Census Bureau figures on the number of residents 5 years old and older who spoke a language other than English at home in 1990.

LOS ANGELES COUNTY 1. Spanish: 2,564,775 2. Chinese: 209,107 3. Tagalog: 155,996 4. Korean: 124,290 5. Japanese: 63,921 6. Vietnamese: 51,313 7. French: 40,921 8. German: 39,849 9. Arabic: 29,039 10. Italian: 28,454

(Note: Some European, southwestern Asia and Indian languages are grouped under the category of Indo-European and are spoken by 147,903 residents. The Indic languages of North India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were spoken by 34,254.)

CALIFORNIA 1. Spanish: 5,478,712 2. Chinese: 575,447 3. Tagalog: 464,644 4. Vietnamese: 233,074 5. Korean: 215,845 6. German: 165,962 7. Japanese: 147,451 8. French: 132,657 9. Italian: 111,133 10. Portuguese: 78,232

(Note: Indo-European: 231,654; Indic: 119,318.)

UNITED STATES 1. Spanish: 17,345,064 2. French: 1,930,404 3. German: 1,547,987 4. Italian: 1,308,648 5. Chinese: 1,319,462 6. Tagalog: 843,251 7. Polish: 723,483 8. Korean: 626,478 9. Vietnamese: 507,069 10. Portuguese: 430,610

(Note: Indo-European: 578,076; Indic: 555,126.)

Land of Languages

* People from more than 140 countries live in Los Angeles County. Of 8.1 million people over age 5, 1.1 million do not speak English at home. (Statewide, there are 8.6 million non-English speakers.)

* 44% of the 641,000 students enrolled at Los Angeles Unified School District are considered Limited English Proficient; they speak 80 languages other than English.

* The top 10 foreign languages in the school district are Spanish, Armenian, Korean, Cantonese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Russian, Farsi, Cambodian and Hebrew.

* The county claims the largest Mexican, Armenian, Korean, Filipino, Salvadoran and Guatemalan communities outside the respective home nations.

* The county boasts the largest Japanese, Iranian and Cambodian populations in the United States.

* There are more than 50 foreign-language newspapers published here.

* On KCSI-TV, there are broadcasts in 17 foreign languages (excluding Spanish).

* There are three Spanish-language TV stations.

* On L.A. radio stations, 15 languages can be heard. Spanish-language station KLAX-FM has the largest audience in Los Angeles.

Sources: Various, including the U.S. Census Bureau and the Los Angeles Unified School District.