Heritage Languages

What is a heritage language?

Languages that are majority languages in other places in the world can become minoritized in a new context. For example, when immigrant families come to the U.S., they bring their languages with them. The next generations may start to lose this language, and this leads to the loss of heritage languages. A heritage language is a language that a family traditionally speaks but may not be what the children speak as they assimilate to another majority language. An example of this could be if your family, perhaps including your grandparents, now live in the U.S., but still most of your family speaks Punjabi. Another massive implication of heritage languages is you may learn the language through your family, but not totally. This is because when it comes to a heritage language, you only hear the language in short spurts. This could include when you hear your parents cooking, and they are speaking in your heritage language, or if you are getting scolded by your parents in a different language. This is also because you’d be most likely to hear your heritage language in a home domain, meaning you’d be more likely to hear these in this language than you’d hear at your home. Another aspect of a heritage language is that you only use it or hear it when it’s relevant. For instance, you may not hear your heritage language’s political phrases because they aren’t relevant or wouldn’t be brought up in a conversation spoken in your heritage language. However, if your mom is a great cook, she may speak more in your heritage language, meaning you’ll hear more terms. Through this form of language listening, you may grasp some words, but your understanding of a language won’t be a completely comprehensive knowledge of the language.

Examples of heritage languages and their acquisition:

Other forms of heritage languages could be, for instance, Spanish. Spanish is a heritage language for many in America and is actually one of the most spoken languages in America, outside of English. There are about 57 million Spanish speakers in the U.S., and about 42 million speak it as their first language (Wood). This shows how many Spanish speakers there are in America. This shows that there are surely a lot of Spanish speakers who learn Spanish because it is their heritage language, especially a large portion of them who speak it as a second language.

Over the years, there has been a lot of research that has gone towards the idea of acquiring a language through it being your heritage language. As I mentioned earlier in this section, learning your heritage language probably isn’t a traditional language learning experience. Heritage speakers of a language can be broadly described as those who grow up speaking and/or hearing a minority or minoritized language at home in a context in which a different language is the language of society, i.e., the majority or majoritized language (Goodin-Mayeda). At home, you may pick up your heritage language differently than you would in the classroom or if it was the only language you were taught and heard around you. Many heritage language speakers have gaps in their knowledge as they don’t learn everything about their heritage language. An example of this could be if you wanted to know how to play baseball and were only taught to throw and only practiced throwing but never learned, practiced, or watched people hitting. You probably wouldn’t know how to hit and thus wouldn’t be a “complete” baseball player. Similarly, if you only hear your heritage language in an at-home context, which is true for most heritage language learners, you probably wouldn’t know that language in the context of the classroom, which would lead to holes in your knowledge. For instance, a heritage language learner may not know words like academic major or minor as there is no need to say it in the home setting.