Speakers of Lithuanian in Los Angeles

Los Angeles County is home to a small but vital Lithuanian community. By all estimates, there are about 2,000 speakers of the Lithuanian language in the Los Angeles area, out of about 10,000 people claiming a Lithuanian ethnic heritage. Although these Lithuanian speakers are not concentrated in any particular location, the community nevertheless retains a great degree of cohesion and a high level of language maintenance.

An exact figure for the number of Lithuanian speakers in the Los Angeles area is at present unavailable, but it is consistently estimated at around 2,000 people. Los Angeles thus has the second largest number of Lithuanian speakers in the US, after Chicago. However, apart from identifying St. Casimir's Catholic Church at St. George Street and Griffith Park Blvd. in Los Feliz as the heart and center of the Lithuanian community in Los Angeles, it is essentially impossible to locate a definite "Lithuanian neighborhood" anywhere in the area. While the greatest concentrations of Lithuanian speakers are in the Los Feliz-Silverlake area and in Santa Monica, "This concentration is not in the sense of having Lithuanian neighbors next door or of hearing Lithuanian spoken on the street or even of having stores catering to the needs of the Lithuanian public (Baškauskas 36)." Because the Lithuanian population began to grow and prosper at about the same time that the automobile age took hold, this is a rather scattered but quite mobile community, with members making the trek to St. Casimir's at least once a week from as far away as Long Beach and Mission Viejo. The community thus enjoys great cohesion without maintaining a significant level of proximity among its members.

It is therefore difficult in most cases to offer more than broad generalizations about the patterns of settlement or destinations of the various waves of immigrants. It is true that the most recent arrivals have gone to Santa Monica due to that city's progressive rent control laws. However, many earlier immigrants also settled in Santa Monica. In general the 90027 and 90026 ZIP codes within Los Angeles and the 90403, 90404, and 90405 ZIP codes in Santa Monica show the greatest concentrations of Lithuanian speakers, according to the 1993 edition of the Lithuanian Almanac for the Western United States. Nevertheless, one cannot delineate any particular city blocks or streets as being predominantly occupied by Lithuanian speakers.

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For questions or comments regarding this page's contents, please e-mail C. Wilhelm via christopher.wilhelm@mayfieldsenior.org.