(CBS) LOS ANGELES More than 53 percent of Los Angeles residents speak a language other than English at home, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
For California as a whole, the number of residents who speak a language other than English at home is nearly 43 percent, according to the data reported today by the Los Angeles Times.
Spanish is by far the most common, but Californians also converse in Korean, Thai, Russian, Hmong, Armenian and dozens of other languages.
The census numbers are likely to fuel a decades-long debate in California over immigrants continuing to use their native tongue, The Times reported. There have been battles over bilingual education, foreign-language ballots and English-only restrictions on business signs.
While immigration is the driving force for the state's linguistic diversity, experts said people often speak another language out of choice rather than necessity. Some do so to get ahead professionally, while others want to maintain connections with their homelands, according to The Times.
"In this century, there's going to be so much interaction with China, economically, socially and culturally," Monterey Park real estate agent Lisa Yang, who insists on speaking Mandarin with her U.S.-born daughter, Melissa Hsu, even on the phone, told The Times.
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