Multilingual Los Angeles: Do immigrant language communities make an impact on language education in public high schools?

Omnipresent multilingual billboards and signs indicate the linguistic diversity of Los Angeles. The City of Los Angeles, the largest city of the metropolitan area, is home to large Tagalog- and Korean-speaking communities. Both Los Angeles County and Orange County consist of several cities. For instance, the cities of Alhambra, Glendale, and Long Beach are located within Los Angeles County, while Garden Grove and Westminster are located in Orange County. The linguistic diversity is marked, from billboards and store signs to neighborhoods like Little Armenia, Little Ethiopia, Koreatown, and Filipinotown. All these names attest to a multilingual and multicultural scene so vibrant that, in some cities that constitute Metro Los Angeles, English either shares equal territory with other languages or takes a second place. Languages of local communities could be offered both as heritage languages for the children of immigrants who grow up speaking and hearing their home language and also foreign languages for all other students in the neighborhood.