Hablan español at City Hall
It's Monday afternoon at City Hall, and Councilwoman Jan Perry is sneaking an hour between meetings to read a novel by Isabel Allende, the prolific Chilean writer. In the original Spanish.
"¿Almohada?" she asks her tutor in the middle of a sentence.
"Pillow," Oscar Szmuch responds.
Perry hired Szmuch a year ago. He has helped her learn Spanish well enough to converse with native speakers.
Nearly 40% of Los Angeles County residents older than age 5 speak Spanish at home -- about 3.7 million people, according to 2006 estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau. Until recently, however, only a handful of City Council members were bilingual.
Now, council President Eric Garcetti gives almost all of his news conferences bilingually. City Controller Laura Chick and City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo, who is Latino, have participated in Spanish-language immersion programs in Mexico. Perry started holding her news conferences in Spanish and English a few years ago. Her office issues most of its public documents in both languages.
Although far from fluent, Councilwoman Wendy Greuel, who represents parts of the Westside and the San Fernando Valley, increasingly uses Spanish in official business.
"I think people appreciate that you try," Greuel said. "My staff always reminds me to slow down. You do get nervous, particularly wanting to know that your pronunciation is correct."
The city's Spanish-speakers fully appreciate the significance of their native language's penetrating the top levels of city government. But that doesn't stop them from wincing as officials stammer over rolled double r's -- erres -- and struggle with pronunciations.
When she speaks, Perry fearlessly stumbles around, saying lo siento -- "I'm sorry" -- whenever she gets something wrong. She said she can comprehend what someone is saying but sometimes trips up in her eagerness to respond.
A few years ago, she learned one lesson the hard way in front of the television cameras.
"I remember at a press conference saying '¡Estoy muy excitada! '"Excitada, which sounds like "excited" in English, means "sexually aroused."
"Oh, my God!" Perry recalled saying afterward. "I just said that on TV!"
That was a lesson in "false friends," the term linguists use to describe words that sound the same in different languages but have different meanings. For example, the word embarazada, which sounds like "embarrassed" in English, means "pregnant."
