Heritage Language Acquisition: A Piece in the Language Puzzle
One of the most significant aspects of a language’s existence is ensuring that it can be taught to new generations of speakers.
One of the most significant groups involved with a language are its heritage speakers — people who have “learned a language informally by being exposed to it at home as opposed to having learned it formally in a school setting,” according to Language Testing International. Sometimes, the heritage language (HL) is the speaker’s first language (L1), but more often than not it comes secondary to another language. And, colloquially speaking, HLs can refer to ancestral languages that a speaker might not have learned at all, or even is culturally removed from.
All heritage speaker narratives tend to share one common feature — the rediscovery of their cultural identity. According to the Pew Research Center, there are about 20 million second-generation Americans, and within these 20 million, about 90% of second-generation Hispanic and Asian-American Immigrants speak English. However, “When it comes to retaining one’s ancestral language, there are sizable differences by race and ethnicity. Eight-in-ten second-generation Hispanics say they can speak Spanish […] Just four-in-ten second-generation Asian Americans say the same about their [HLs]”.
These statistics could indicate a number of factors — for example, some heritage speakers don’t feel the need to know their HL, particularly if they already know another, more dominant language, such as English, which is notable in that “No language in history has been used by so many people or spanned a greater portion of the globe”. However, HLs are still extremely valuable for their speakers, as they enable them to retain their identities.
Nadya Faulx, a writer for NPR, describes that
“Without Arabic, little else about me is Arab. I don’t dress or look like an Arab […] Without Arabic, can I even call myself an Arab? As proud as I am of my Arabic heritage, without a linguistic marker to link me to the community, I’ve never felt entirely comfortable identifying as an Arab.”
Faulx cites her feelings of “ethnic inadequacy” and wishes to better understand her identity as the primary motivators to learn her HL.
Heritage Language Acquisition
In the linguistic subfield of HL acquisition, there is significant involvement of the heritage speaker’s cultural identity, which heavily relates to the HL. In early HL educational settings, LeadWithLanguages advises parents to engage in proactive roles to teach the HL to their children, citing advantages which include “facilitating the transmission of values and cultural norms across generations”, in addition to “promoting family togetherness”.
In dialogue with Faulx’s narrative, learning Arabic enabled her to better connect with her family at home and in the Middle East, in addition to feeling closer to her identity as an Arab woman. Many of my colleagues felt the same way upon learning more of their HL, remarking that their family members can better communicate with them — which makes a huge difference in a family dynamic, often fostering family closeness, in addition to aiding them in traveling abroad to visit other family members.
During my academic career, I’ve taken several Arabic language classes, comprised of heritage speakers and other learners, and the heritage speakers I’ve worked with came from a variety of linguistic backgrounds — some were very comfortable with the language, while others knew how to speak but could not read or write, while others knew very little. Ultimately, heritage speakers are not defined by their level of fluency in their HL, as it is their cultural connection to the language that grants them the title of heritage speaker.
Heritage speakers are culturally connected to their HL, and, while learning their HL, they also learn about their identity, thus emphasizing the significance of cultural education as a supplement to language learning. HLs can be Indigenous languages, immigrant languages, or colonial languages, and HL learners, as I noticed in my classes, can have “widely diverse levels of proficiency in the language” according to Heritage Languages in America.
In terms of this proficiency, as noted by Nicolas Arnal at George Mason University, heritage speakers often have more receptive linguistic abilities than expressive ones, also known as passive multilingualism. For example, a heritage speaker might have full comprehension when listening to a family member speak, but cannot fully express themselves to reply in their HL.
Heritage speakers often “show fluency in listening and speaking but have not developed their reading and writing”. This is due to how most heritage languages are first learned in domestic, rather than academic settings: therefore, their language use is more conversational. Furthermore, Ann Kelleher of the Center for Applied Linguistics notes that some heritage speakers “may not understand the language but are a part of a family or community where the language is spoken”, therefore indicating the gradient nature of the heritage speaker community.
In addition to establishing HL learners as a key group in the language education field, HL pedagogy serves several benefits for heritage speakers. LeadWithLanguages encourages parents and other speakers of HLs to “pass [the language] on” to children and younger generations of speakers. In addition to preserving a language and its culture, HL education allows children to better socialize with heritage-language speaking friends and relatives, thus better connecting them to their identities.
In academic settings, “studies show that bilingualism enhances children’s cognitive abilities, boosts school performance, and fosters the development of bicultural adaptation — the ability to feel comfortable and thrive in two cultures”, which ultimately supports their self-esteem. HL education is vital to preserving a language, in addition to connecting more speakers to their cultures and identities.
Factors and Challenges in HL Education
Often, the beginnings of HL Education occur within the family, in a home setting. LeadWithLanguages recommends parents and guardians to expose children to the HL as much as possible, as early as possible. By taking advantage of the critical period of language acquisition, which occurs from birth until about the age of ten, parents allow their children to become more skillful at the language.
While the critical period theory is hotly debated by linguists, parents, and language instructors, recent studies indicate that beyond the age of ten, it is nearly impossible to achieve nativelike fluency. And, the process of learning and acquiring the language generally becomes more difficult after this window. Starting language education from a very young age benefits children as learners, as in this period, as the language instruction is generally much more implicit, rather than explicit: this is why young children tend to easily “pick up” a new language upon being exposed to it, whereas adults must study grammar, verb conjugations, and vocabulary head-on in order to learn a language.
However, for learners beyond age ten, not all hope is lost — in fact, some linguists argue that the critical period actually lasts until age 18, wherein children “remain very skilled at learning the grammar of a new language”. And, for many HL learners, the “new” language isn’t very new at all — more often than not, the HL is familiar to the learner in some way, therefore making it much less daunting to approach from a learner’s perspective!
As Faulx notes, “Unlike students who start a foreign language from scratch, most heritage learners come equipped with some degree of fluency, if not literacy, in a language, and an understanding of the community that uses the language”. As culture and language are heavily related, this gives heritage speakers somewhat of an upper hand in their language learning.
While the principles of the critical period primarily appeal to young children and education in the domestic setting, they are also useful in considering formal language instruction, as some heritage language-speaking families encourage children to learn their HL in an academic setting — I distinctly recall one of my heritage speaker classmates, who enrolled in Arabic classes per his mother’s request, and other classmates who received praise from their families for pursuing their HL in college. In addition, some heritage speakers may have gained some linguistic proficiency, but aspire to become more fluent, or more comfortable with reading and writing, thus relying on the structure of a classroom approach to “fill in the gaps”.
Ultimately, beyond the home, there emerge uncertainties pertaining to how HL education should differ from foreign language education in the classroom. Leeman, Rabin, and Roman-Mendoza, in their paper Identity and Activism in Heritage Language Education, discuss how
“Critical pedagogy takes up issues of identity, and sees education as a site where students are socialized into particular subject positions and social roles” (482).
In addition, these instructors must seek to rework the linguistic hierarchies which are often enforced by educational practices. This is also crucial to empowering students in their identities, rather than indoctrinating them into the dominant social structures — Leeman et al. continue that “educational practices [that] reinforce language hierarchies and subordinate students’ existing identities and language practices, schools can become sites of institutional denigration of the learners’ sense of self” (482).
Another challenge, mentioned by LeadWithLanguages, is how some children may reject their HL and heritage culture, which “puts the heritage language at risk of being lost,” in the case that the parents stop using it with the child, thus possibly contributing to language loss. Several factors can influence a speaker’s attitude towards their HL, including societal pressures to fit in with their non-HL-speaking peers, outsider criticism or discouragement of the HL, and even a country’s political rhetoric towards immigrants or Indigenous peoples, which may then influence a speaker’s view of their own culture and language. And, since language and identity are so heavily intertwined, these ideas can therefore significantly impact a speaker’s self-image.
Faulx cites Maria Carreira, a Spanish professor at California State University, who notes that heritage speakers “go through phases,” where they view using their HL at home and with family members as normal, yet later reject the language. Carreira describes this as “a rejection, turning toward English. They want to blend in”. However, beyond that stage, many heritage speakers wish they had continued to speak and learn their HL, wanting to better understand their cultural identities. These findings, in addition to the numerous benefits of learning one’s HL, tend to outweigh the feelings of rejection a speaker might have for their HL at one point or another — ultimately, there is great value in learning one’s HL.
And these findings reign true for many heritage speakers — Last year, another colleague of mine reflected on their childhood and adolescence, where they rejected Vietnamese, their HL, when their parents and family members tried to speak with them. Their narrative fell directly in dialogue with Carreira’s findings — they recalled wanting to fit in with their English-speaking classmates, feeling embarrassed by their HL. Now, as a young adult, they regret their rejection of their HL and chose to enroll in Vietnamese courses at our school. I still remember their advice to our professor, an Arabic speaker with young children, who was struggling with the challenge of passing the language on them: “keep talking to them in Arabic,” they implored. They advised our professor to teach his children now, rather than later, as (in line with the Critical Period Theory) at a later age, it is much more difficult to learn.
HL Educational Resources
For heritage speakers looking for educational resources, there exist several organizations, social media groups, and other websites, in addition to formal HL education programs.
Online, the Alliance for the Advancement of Heritage Languages website features a collection of Heritage voices videos, FAQs about heritage speakers and languages, books and academic articles, and other resources. Other organizations and resources for HLs include the Saskatchewan Organization for Heritage Languages, which lists an assortment of educational resources and self-assessment tools for HL learners. And, Wikitongues has an ever-growing myriad of language documentation videos on YouTube — here, heritage speakers can find videos in their HLs to practice their listening comprehension and even learn more about their cultures!
In considering formal HL education, many universities offer Less-commonly-taught language courses, including the University of Pittsburgh, Michigan State University, and Tulane University (to name a few!). Often, these language classes accommodate heritage speakers of the less-commonly-taught languages, in addition to new language learners.
Other universities, such as Portland State University, offer specific courses geared toward heritage learners “who wish to strengthen their basic skills in a heritage language including speaking, reading, writing, and cultural awareness. Instruction is tailored to the needs and goals of the individual students, regardless of ability level”.
Despite the challenges faced by heritage speakers in learning their HLs, there exist many resources and organizations to support their endeavors in not only learning their HL but learning more about their culture and their identity as they learn to “sound the part,” as Nadya Faulx put it.
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