In general, a heritage language is defined as a language spoken at home while not being the dominant language of the wider society (Rothman, 2009). Heritage speakers are bilinguals who were raised in homes where a language other than the mainstream language of the community was spoken (cf Polinsky 2019). For instance, Zhangsan was raised in China and acquired Mandarin Chinese from birth. At age 10, he immigrated to the Netherlands and shifted to speaking Dutch as the dominant language in his life. Meanwhile, Chinese was spoken with his family during the 20 years of stay in the Netherlands till now. In this case, Zhangsan is a heritage speaker of Chinese and Chinese would be a heritage language.
Heritage speakers represent a unique linguistic profile that is distinct from both native speakers and second language (L2) learners. Phonetically and phonologically, while they may not attain native-like proficiency and display a slight heritage accent, heritage speakers outperform even advanced second language (L2) learners. In their lexicon, heritage speakers demonstrate a strong grasp of the vocabulary they know. It is generally believed that heritage languages evolve towards a simplified grammar system. Certain phenomena appear to be more resilient, such as determiners, tense while others like long distance dependency, ambiguity, silent elements are things that heritage speakers find difficult with (Polinsky 2019). However, recent studies by Andriani et al. (2021) and D’Alessandro et al. (2023) suggest that heritage speakers may also develop increased complexity in grammar. It is still an ongoing research topic which needs more data and analysis to build a more fine-grained picture.
Though there are many studies on heritage language, the investigation of heritage Chinese speakers is limited, despite the large Chinese diaspora populations in Europe and worldwide. The number of Chinese immigrants globally continues to grow substantially. Examining heritage Chinese presents an interesting opportunity to explore how the language changes in contact setting. Chinese possesses many distinctive grammatical properties worthy of analysis to elucidate which areas of structure demonstrate resilience to change versus those that are vulnerable. It is informative to investigate both the nature of any grammatical changes as well as the sociolinguistic factors that may influence patterns of change and retention. From a sociolinguistic perspective, language is an important marker of social identity. Immigrants and their descendants may negotiate identities at the intersection of their heritage language and culture in the new environment. The multilingual experiences of diaspora Chinese communities offer insights into the complex interplay between language, culture and identity across generations.
If you are a Chinese immigrant living abroad (wherever you are) and want to participant in the study, please feel free to contact me! It’s more than welcome!
Andriani, L., D’Alessandro, R., Frasson, A., Van Osch, B., Sorgini, L., & Terenghi, S. (2022). Adding the microdimension to the study of language change in contact. Three case studies. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.5748p>
D’Alessandro, R., Andriani, L., Frasson, A., Pinto, M., Sorgini, L., & Terenghi, S. (To appear). Microcontact and syntactic theory. lingbuzz/007622.
Rothman J., (2009) Understanding the nature and outcomes of early bilingualism: Romance languages as heritage languages. International Journal of Bilingualism 13, 155–163.
Polinsky, M., & Scontras, G. (2019). Understanding heritage languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 23(1), 4–20.