Heritage language

A language associated with a person’s family or community that differs from the dominant language around them. Heritage speakers often acquire it at home while learning the dominant language through wider society.

Heritage speaker: A person raised with meaningful exposure to a family or community language that is not dominant in the surrounding society. The term identifies people whose varied proficiency and exposure shape heritage-language learning.
Heritage language education: Teaching designed for learners with family or community ties to a language not dominant in their society. Programs address learners’ mixed proficiency and prior exposure rather than treating everyone as beginners.
Language shift: A community’s gradual replacement of one language by another across social domains and generations. Heritage languages often persist within families as public life shifts toward a dominant language.
Second-language acquisition: The learning of a language after a person’s first language, often through instruction or wider exposure. Heritage learners typically have family exposure that many second-language learners lack.
Linguistic identity: The ways language use and language knowledge contribute to a person’s sense of self and social belonging. A heritage language can connect speakers to family histories and community identities.
Language dominance: The relative strength or accessibility of a person’s languages across contexts and skills. Heritage speakers may be more fluent in the societal language despite early exposure to the heritage language.
Community language school: A supplementary school where a community teaches its language and cultural practices, often outside regular school hours. These schools provide instruction when mainstream schooling offers little heritage-language support.
Intergenerational language transmission: The passing of a language from one generation to the next through interaction and social institutions. Transmission explains how a community language becomes part of descendants’ language experience.
Foreign language: A language studied in a setting where it is not widely used in everyday public life. A heritage language is tied to personal or community history, not only classroom study.
Language ideology: Shared beliefs about languages, their speakers, and their proper roles in society. Ideologies influence whether heritage-language varieties are valued, stigmatized, or treated as deficient.

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