The Many Misconceptions About Heritage Speakers
An amalgamation of anecdotes about growing up as a heritage speaker and feeling misunderstood by los demás.
In a rather bored and procrastinatory state, I opened Youtube. One weird algorithm suggestion and two rabbit holes later, I was watching Vogue Germany videos on Leni Klum, Heidi Klum’s daughter.
There she was, a girl born to a German mother, but raised in the U.S. And she was doing these video for Vogue in German.
Even though she code-switched into English a few times, and made some mistakes that I could notice, I finished the video thinking, “Wow, from one heritage speaker to another, your German is really good!” And then I turned to the comments and started to have painful flashbacks from my entire childhood of everyone asking me why my German wasn’t magically perfect because I have one German-speaking parent.
Comment after comment highlighted her mistakes, saying her German was bad. Or, that her German should be better, considering her mother is German. And then of course came the stabs at her mother’s bad parenting techniques, as evidenced by her daughters lack of German.
Alas, it was a story of yet another heritage speaker out in the world speaking their heritage language better than statistically probable (according to research in the field which we’ll get into), and getting attacked by listeners who are so confident in their judgments.
This week, we’re talking about heritage speakers: who they are and why they’re so misunderstood.
Who is a heritage speaker?
Different linguists define this term differently, but here’s my (only slightly confusing) definition, so we’re all on the same page. If parents or grandparents grow up in country 1 and speak language 1 and then move to country 2 and have a child who grows up speaking language 1 at home or with family, but language 2 outside of the home, that child is a heritage speaker of language 11.
It’ll make more sense with an example. I’m a two-time heritage speaker. I grew up in Miami, U.S., predominantly in English. On my mom’s side, my grandparents moved to the U.S. from Colombia, so I’m a heritage speaker of Spanish. On my dad’s side, my dad moved to the U.S. from Switzerland, so I’m a heritage speaker of Swiss German.
Heritage speakers’ bilingualism (or lack thereof) completely varies based on their circumstances. Most heritage speakers are receptive bilinguals and understand their parents’ language well even if they can’t speak it fluently. Other heritage speakers are conversational in their heritage language. And in rare occasions (often with the help of bilingual education), there are heritage speakers who are balanced bilinguals.
It's wrong to assume that heritage speakers should be balanced bilinguals
Balanced bilinguals are bilinguals who speak two languages at a similar level to monolingual speakers. Studies either think that balanced bilinguals are the absolute minority of bilingual speakers, or they think that balanced bilinguals don’t exist.
Based on the conversations I’ve overheard—in the Youtube comments or otherwise—people seem to really believe that most heritage speakers are balanced bilinguals. But if we step back for a moment…it’s kind of a crazy thing to believe. Just because you have a parent whose first language is different than the majority language doesn’t mean you automatically acquire their first language. It isn’t inherited through your DNA.
Language (proficiency) is a reflection of circumstance
Here’s the thing: you can’t assume that the heritage language is the language of the household. In my home, for example, my parents communicate in English. And I speak mainly in English to my sister2. So, even though I would get some input from Spanish and Swiss German—especially from my grandparents—I was listening to English so much more than any other language. Then, when I entered school, my life was even more so in English. It’s no wonder that my dominant language is English. It also makes perfect sense that my Spanish is better than my Swiss German, considering I was surrounded by it more throughout my life.
Circumstance matters
Every heritage speaker has a different relationship to their heritage language. It depends on their circumstance. You can’t expect that all heritage speakers have ample input in the heritage language, especially in multilingual homes. You also can’t place the responsibility of teaching the child the heritage language solely on parents. The outside circumstance matters: How is the heritage language viewed in the country? Is it made fun of on TV? Is it viewed as the language of progress, something that will lead to societal benefits?
Children are receptive to those messages, which is why it’s not as easy as simply speaking the heritage language at home.
Why it’s hard to maintain multiple languages in a home: Stories from Miami
Raising children bilingually is hard. It’s not as simple as just speaking the language to them. For one, they could resist the heritage language. Back to the anecdotes:
I was a bilingual brat as a child. I would pretend like I didn’t understand Spanish. I would refuse to speak Spanish. I literally made my eighty-year-old grandmother learn English to communicate with me.
And while I now cringe at those memories, I’ve learned that I’m not the only bilingual brat. I see this behavior in so many bilingual children. My family friend is five years old. His dad only speaks English. His mom speaks English and Spanish. I told the mom to start speaking to him in Spanish, and I told her about some parenting techniques. And the five year old is not having it. He pretends he doesn’t understand a word. He refuses to communicate in Spanish. He has full-blown meltdowns, crying about how he only wants to speak English.
Several of my professors—who research bilingualism for a living—confessed that raising their kids bilingually was harder than they ever thought it would be. Some said their children only understood Spanish, but refused to speak it. Others said their children understood and spoke Spanish, but that as soon as they entered school, they began using English a lot more than Spanish.
From my own experience as a former bilingual brat, I can say that my lashing out came from a place of deep insecurity. I was speaking Spanish petrified that someone would correct me or make fun of me, which frankly happened all the time. As a sensitive little one, it was too much to take, and it was better to have a tantrum than to risk people making fun of my language. Looking back now, I can ask: What was worse: my Spanish, or people’s expectations of how my Spanish should sound?
In sum, stop assuming people’s language proficiency based on their background
If there’s one thing to keep repeating in this newsletter it’s that circumstance matters. Even in one city, like Miami, heritage speakers range from receptive bilinguals to balanced bilinguals. The differences come from a difference in circumstance. For example:
Some of the heritage speakers I know moved to Miami in late childhood. They already had years of acquiring Spanish before coming to Miami and learning English. That makes a difference.
Some of the heritage speakers I know had access to quality bilingual education. Bilingual education doesn’t mean having one hour of language class a week. There’s different models of bilingual education, but my mom, for example, went to a two-way immersion bilingual elementary and middle school and she had all subjects in English and Spanish. That makes a difference.
Some of the heritage speakers I know only speak Spanish to their parents. They grew up surrounded by only Spanish in their household. That makes a difference. (But note: not all children in Spanish-speaking households receive the same amount of input. It’s the reason why younger siblings tend to speak the heritage language less than older siblings: they’re born in a bilingual household. They usually speak the new language with their sibling. Thus, they have less input.)
Conclusion
Back to the Youtube comment. The thread continued:
The first comment: Leni is American. Heidi probably stopped speaking to her in German years ago.
The second comment: It’s a shame, normally children with two nationalities also have two mother tongues. I speak both Italian and German perfectly because my mother is from the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland. My parents consistently spoke both languages with us.
Here are the questions I’d ask the second commenter. First, I’m no geography-whizz, but Switzerland and Germany border one another, while the U.S. is a continent and an ocean away from Germany. Could it be that you had more opportunities to speak your heritage language, Italian? Were you encouraged to speak both languages by the society around you? Also, could it be that you had access to quality Italian classes as a child?
But back to Leni. Leni clearly does speak German. She did a whole video in German. And while she made mistakes, they clearly didn’t deter from her being understood, which is the whole point of speaking a language.
Thank you + Discussion
Thanks for reading this newsletter! I hope you enjoyed it! Please let me know in the comments below (paid subscribers) or by replying to this email:
Are you a heritage speaker of a language? What has your experience with your heritage language been like?
Do you expect heritage speakers to be balanced bilinguals? Has your opinion changed from reading this newsletter?
Again, this is my definition. It’s a debated term, so you can find hundreds of different ways of defining a heritage speaker.
It’s often that younger siblings have less input in the heritage language since their older siblings often speak to them in a language that isn’t the heritage language.
🔥🔥🔥🔥