California Culture & Language

California is a minority-majority state with no ethnic group forming a majority: Hispanics are the largest single group, Asians were 15.4 per cent and non-Hispanic whites 41.2 per cent in the 2020 count, Spanish is spoken by 28 per cent of the population and has been spoken here since 1542, and nearly 43 per cent of residents speak a language other than English at home, a higher share than any other state. Religion follows the mix: 28 per cent Catholic, 32 per cent Protestant of all kinds and 27 per cent unaffiliated in 2014. California English has its own vowel shift.

Its cultural exports are the world's: the American film industry, which moved to Hollywood after the district joined Los Angeles in 1910 and still keeps Universal, Paramount, Warner Bros., Disney and Sony in or near it, with the Walk of Fame's 2,800 stars and the 1923 sign as its monuments; the beach and car culture the Beach Boys sold in the 1960s; the hippie movement that began in San Francisco in the early 1960s and ran to the Summer of Love and the gay-rights movement; the personal computer and the internet from the Santa Clara Valley; skateboarding, the diner, the burger joint and the fast-food chain -- A&W, McDonald's, Taco Bell and Panda Express are all Californian -- and the fortune cookie. Disneyland, opened by Walt Disney himself on 17 July 1955, has had more cumulative visitors than any theme park on earth.

The high culture is the Getty and the county museum in Los Angeles, the missions and their Mission Revival descendants, Hearst Castle above San Simeon, the Victorians of San Francisco and its cable cars, and a literature from Steinbeck's Cannery Row to the Beats; the everyday culture is the taquería, the farmers' market, the wine tasting room, the surf report and the freeway. Los Angeles has hosted the Olympics twice and will again in 2028.

English is universal and Spanish is the state's second language, spoken by 28 per cent and present since 1542, so a little Spanish is returned warmly in the south and the valley; Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese and Korean carry the Asian neighbourhoods, and nearly 43 per cent of households speak something other than English at home. California English has its own vowel shift and its own words -- the freeway takes a definite article and a number, the 405, the 101; the coast is the beach; June Gloom is the fog; and NorCal and SoCal are different countries that share a state.