Heritage Language

A heritage language is a minority or immigrant language acquired by a speaker as a first language in the home but later overtaken by the dominant societal language, producing a bilingual whose competence in the home language diverges from monolingual baselines. The heritage speaker is neither a typical L1 nor a typical L2 user; the term names a distinct acquisition path.

Defining the Speaker

Valdés (2000) defined heritage speakers narrowly as individuals raised in homes where a non-dominant language is spoken, who speak or at least understand that language, and who are to some degree bilingual in it and the societal language. Polinsky and others working in linguistic theory have refined this further: heritage speakers are simultaneous or sequential bilinguals whose first language was acquired naturalistically in early childhood but whose dominant language shifted, usually around the time of formal schooling, to the majority language of the surrounding community.

Three features distinguish the heritage speaker from neighbouring categories:

• From L1 monolinguals: heritage grammars often show divergent attainment. Speakers may have native-like phonology but reduced morphosyntactic, lexical, or literacy competence.
• From L2 learners: heritage speakers had naturalistic early input. Their phonology, prosody, and core lexicon typically pattern with native rather than late-learner norms.
• From balanced bilinguals: the heritage language is the weaker language, and societal pressures asymmetrically favour the majority language.

The Asymmetry Profile

Heritage speakers commonly present a characteristic asymmetry: strong oral-aural skills with weak literacy, robust everyday lexicon with thin academic register, and intact phonology alongside simplified morphosyntax. Polinsky and Scontras (2020) attribute this profile to three forces: transfer from the dominant language, attrition of structures already acquired, and divergent attainment, where the speaker arrives at a different mental representation because the input itself was qualitatively and quantitatively different from a monolingual's.

Benmamoun, Montrul and Polinsky (2013) catalogue recurring vulnerabilities across heritage grammars: case marking, agreement, complex syntax, narrow-scope quantification, and aspectual distinctions. Properties acquired late in monolingual development, or those with low input frequency, are most fragile.

Why Heritage Grammars Diverge

Three accounts compete, and they are not mutually exclusive:

1. Incomplete acquisition (Montrul): the heritage grammar fails to develop fully because input drops sharply at school age, before late-acquired structures consolidate.
2. Attrition: structures are acquired but later eroded through disuse and competition with the dominant language.
3. Divergent attainment (Polinsky and Scontras): the input itself was different, so the grammar is fully acquired but built on a non-monolingual base.

Benmamoun and colleagues argue that attempting to assign every heritage feature to one cause is misguided. The same speaker can show genuine gaps in one domain and successful divergent acquisition in another.

Pedagogical Implications

Heritage learners in language classrooms occupy an awkward position. Standard L2 instruction underestimates their oral fluency and treats them as beginners; standard L1 instruction overestimates their literacy and metalinguistic awareness. Specialised heritage-language pedagogy emphasises bridging oral competence to literacy, expanding register, formalising grammatical knowledge already implicit, and validating the home variety against the prestige standard.

The heritage learner also raises identity-laden questions. The home variety is often stigmatised relative to the prestige variant taught in classrooms (Mexican Spanish vs. peninsular Spanish, Cantonese vs. Mandarin). Pedagogy that frames heritage speakers as deficient versions of monolinguals undermines both motivation and the legitimacy of the variety they actually speak.

References

• Benmamoun, E., Montrul, S. & Polinsky, M. (2013). Heritage languages and their speakers: Opportunities and challenges for linguistics. Theoretical Linguistics, 39(3-4), 129-181.
• Montrul, S. (2008). Incomplete acquisition in bilingualism: Re-examining the age factor. John Benjamins.
• Polinsky, M. (2018). Heritage languages and their speakers. Cambridge University Press.
• Polinsky, M. & Scontras, G. (2020). Understanding heritage languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 23(1), 4-20.
• Valdés, G. (2000). The teaching of heritage languages: An introduction for Slavic-teaching professionals. In O. Kagan & B. Rifkin (Eds.), The learning and teaching of Slavic languages and cultures. Slavica.