Crossing Language Barriers

Armando Rodriguez spoke only Spanish when he left his native Mexico 12 years ago to find work in Los Angeles. So he came to this country prepared to learn a new tongue.

After getting a job as a restaurant dishwasher and kitchen assistant, Rodriguez quickly absorbed new words and expressions by chatting with co-workers and customers. He picked up so much that he never needed to enroll in a formal language class.

That’s how he came to speak . . . Hebrew. “Lamah loh?” (“Why not?”), Rodriguez asked.

“He speaks Hebrew like an Israeli,” boasted Felix Wizgan, patriarch of the family that owns Golan Restaurant, the kosher eatery in North Hollywood where Rodriguez has worked since shortly after coming to this country. Wizgan, an Orthodox Jew who moved to Los Angeles from Israel in 1985, added, “A lot of people ask me, ‘Is he your son?’ ”

Rodriguez, who now also speaks fluent English, is something of a language-learning marvel. But he’s hardly the only one in multicultural Southern California getting acquainted with a foreign language on the job or in other informal, non-schoolroom settings.

Picking up a few words of a foreign language--or, in exceptional cases, advanced conversational skills--sometimes is a way to get ahead economically. Rodriguez, for instance, worked his way up from dishwasher to a manager’s job, with the help of his fluent Hebrew.

Casually learning foreign words and phrases also has helped Southern Californians overcome, at least in a modest way, barriers between ethnic groups. And though Spanish is heard nearly everywhere, many other foreign languages are being acquired too.

Take the experience of Bobby Brown, an African American postal worker who has picked up a smattering of Armenian while delivering the mail in Glendale over the last 15 years. At times, when he greets a customer in Armenian, “They’re shocked,” Brown said. “They invite me in. They want to give me Armenian desserts!”

It’s no surprise when immigrants to this country pick up English, given the opportunities and economic and social incentives.

But something much richer is happening in polyglot Los Angeles, where there are people like Rodriguez and Brown--immigrants or native-born Americans who become conversant in unexpected languages, learned in the workplace or through friendships or romances that began on the job.

Throughout history, people have picked up languages this way.

“If you were living in New York at the turn of the century, you heard--especially in the factories and in the streets--a lot of Yiddish, a lot of Italian, Polish, Russian, Hungarian and Greek. And if you had constant contact with those folks, you picked it up,” said Alan M. Kraut, an expert in immigration history at American University in Washington.

One of the nation’s most famous casual language learners is Gen. Colin L. Powell, who acquired, as he has put it, a bissel (a little) Yiddish as a youth while working at a Jewish-owned furniture store in the Bronx.

Publisher William Jovanovich, in his 1998 autobiography “Serbdom,” tells of how as a young boy he was surprised to see his Tata (Papa) launch into a conversation in Serbian with an elderly black man in Denver. Jovanovich’s Tata explained that the black man had worked “with us Montenegrins in a coal mine . . . and nobody spoke English. He learned our language in self-defense.”

Rubbing Shoulders at School, on the Job

But even in this nation of immigrants, rarely if ever have so many languages and cultures occupied the same place as Los Angeles in the 1990s. An estimated 80 to 90 foreign languages are spoken among families with children in the city school system. Foreign-language expressions, particularly in Spanish, sometimes are picked up in the schoolyard as well as in the classroom.

Likewise, lots of people are exposed on the job to foreign languages used by co-workers or customers. So when economic necessity or the desire for companionship at work supplies motivation, learning a language other than English begins.

In the absence of statistics or formal research, it’s hard to draw generalizations about the kinds of people and situations that lead to informal language learning on the job. But a few patterns are apparent.

Many factory managers, in the apparel industry and elsewhere, need to know some Spanish to communicate with their workers. They often pick up little more than work-related terms and perhaps simple greetings.

In other cases, the learners are inquisitive, unself-conscious types who enjoy connecting with other people no matter what language or cultural barriers may be involved.

Brown, for example, who makes special deliveries for the Glendale post office, started picking up Armenian as a way not only to greet Armenian-speaking customers but to resolve questions such as whether someone is living at a particular address.

He wound up making new friends and, in a couple of cases, dated Armenian-speaking women who taught him more expressions.

A noticeable amount of the casual foreign-language learning in the Los Angeles area seems to take place between immigrant Latinos and Jews, possibly because of the large numbers of the two groups in the city and heritages that make them comfortable learning new languages.

A twist on the Latino-Jewish language connection has emerged at Ventura Kosher Meats in Tarzana. Three Mexican-born employees there have picked up some Farsi, a tongue spoken by Iranian-born Jews who shop at the store.

The champion is Juan Sanchez. Although his grammar and accent are described as rough, Sanchez speaks Farsi with little hesitation and enjoys making small talk with customers.

At the store, Sanchez generally is known as Moshe, the Hebrew name for Moses that was given to him by a co-worker.

For Sanchez, the learning process began after he left Guadalajara, Mexico, for Los Angeles in 1988 and went to work at a food store largely serving Iranian Jews.

“I was working there 12 hours every day and only hearing Persian, Persian, Persian. So that’s what I picked up, the Iranian language. And I love it. After I learned it, I found out that I’m another person,” said Sanchez, explaining that the exposure to a new language broadened his horizons.

His old boss at the grocery “used to invite me to parties. Right away, I picked up the dancing. . . . They used to say, ‘You’ve picked up the language, you’re picking up how to dance. What else do you want to learn about us?’ Everything!”

Sanchez says many of Ventura Kosher Meats’ customers--including schoolteachers, doctors and lawyers who use some Spanish in their own work--chat with him in Spanish at the store. But, he says, the customers’ familiarity with Spanish occasionally has a downside: “Sometimes the customers catch us speaking with bad expressions [foul language], and they tell our boss,” he said, laughing.

Still, most customers seem to enjoy the multilingual environment at the store, particularly the ability of some employees to speak Farsi. “People love it,” said Debbie Walker, the store manager. Many Farsi-speaking customers, she said, “feel more comfortable talking their own language, even though most of them also speak English.”

Language Diversity an Irritation to Some

But not everyone is tickled. Riffat Chohan, who owns a pizzeria next to Ventura Kosher Meats, said she would rather see Sanchez and other Latino immigrants learning or perfecting their English than picking up another language.

“There are only certain places [in this country] where there are Spanish or Persian people,” said Chohan, a Pakistani who speaks Urdu at home but only English at work. To get ahead in this country, she said, “it’s more important to learn English.”

What’s more, Chohan says she is annoyed when she goes to a bank or another business and finds employees speaking a language she doesn’t understand. “You don’t know if they’re talking about you,” she said.

Ethnic restaurants are perhaps the most common venues for casual language learning. Marcelino Fructuoso, 26, is a case in point. After working as a cook in a succession of Koreatown restaurants for six years, he has learned how to carry on simple conversations and understand work instructions, in Korean.

It’s not the first time he’s needed to know a new language. Fructuoso, who left school at age 12, grew up in Oaxaca, Mexico, where he first spoke an indigenous language, Zapotec. He says he didn’t learn Spanish until he started studying it in elementary school.

His English, however, is negligible. He knows numerous words and numbers, but can’t follow a conversation.

Fructuoso explained that since he came to this country 10 years ago, he has worked long hours, mainly among Spanish or Korean speakers. He says he hasn’t had much exposure on the job, or elsewhere, to English.

Some experts note the greater willingness of many immigrants today to continue speaking their native tongues in public, even in the presence of Americans who don’t understand them.

The immigrants are “all going to acquire English but, meanwhile, [they feel that] there’s nothing wrong with their language, and they enjoy using it in public,” said Joshua A. Fishman, a sociolinguist at Yeshiva University in New York.

In Southern California, the experience of Hebrew-speaking Rodriguez vividly illustrates the process and consequences of casually learning a new language.

Rodriguez, 29, left school in Mexico at age 16 and has acquired all of his Hebrew in the real world of the restaurant business. He learned by observing and listening to co-workers and friends. Early on, it was tough to make out words, and learning came in small steps: One of his bosses would say he needed bay-tzah, then would grab an egg.

He started picking up greetings and other phrases and got a kick out of the reaction from customers when he used the expressions. “People would tell me, ‘Armando, you’re the only Mexican I know who speaks Hebrew.’ And that made me feel good,” he said.

Particularly helpful was one of the Wizgan daughters, Ronit Yakovi, who would both talk with--and tease--Rodriguez in Hebrew. When she speaks with him, Rodriguez said, “I follow the conversation, the way it is, until she’s done. Then I say, ‘You said this word, What does it mean?’ ”

The learning process, particularly in the early years, didn’t always go smoothly. One time he mixed up bay-tzah (egg) for bat-tzahl (onion). When he would make those sort of goofs, his friend Yakovi would have a quick rejoinder: “Armando, ah-tah lo normali.” (“Armando, you’re not normal.”)

Along the way, Rodriguez, who describes himself as a dedicated Catholic, also became fluent in the mores of observant Jews. In conversation, he punctuates every few sentences with “Barukh Ha-Shem,” a Hebrew expression of faith often translated as “Thank God” or, more literally, “Blessed be God.”

“He says ‘Barukh Ha-Shem’ more than I do!” exclaimed Fritz Friedman, an Orthodox Jew in the advertising business who regularly eats at Golan.

Rodriguez says his knowledge of Hebrew and Jewish culture helped him develop close friendships with the family that owns Golan Restaurant, the Wizgans, as well as with his Israeli-born co-workers and many people in the Orthodox Jewish community around North Hollywood.

The strength of those community ties was apparent after Rodriguez was involved in a tragic car accident last December in Arizona, while heading with family to Mexico for a Christmas visit.

Rodriguez’s mother was killed in the crash. He was seriously hurt, suffering head injuries that put him into a coma for two weeks and left him hospitalized for two months.

Adopted Community Provided Support

During his recovery, Rodriguez recalls with gratitude, two of the Wizgans’ adult children flew to Arizona to visit him in the hospital. He said that someone from the restaurant--one of the Wizgans, a co-worker or a customer--would call nearly every day until he returned to work after several months of recuperation.

Rodriguez even received calls from Israel from former co-workers who wanted to offer him encouragement. Prayers were said for Rodriguez at nearby synagogues, and a local Hebrew-language tabloid newspaper put a short item on its front page urging readers to help Rodriguez, who it said for years “has been serving the Israeli community faithfully at Golan Restaurant.”

Today, Rodriguez is back at work, helping manage Golan. When customers and friends visiting the restaurant ask how he’s feeling, Rodriguez smiles and provides a quick reply to let them know that things are fine: “Barukh Ha-Shem.”