JOIN USMany come to the college in the hope of regaining their ancestral language. Perhaps as children, they grew up speaking that language, it’s a language used in their home and their family. With this particular group, home language proficiency decreased rapidly for most students with the onset of schooling in English. The subtractive effect of majority language on home language use was particularly acute when the child felt obliged to reject the home language in order to be accepted by the majority group.
The main reason they learn or relearn a language that may be considered as one of their ancestral family languages is often for personal reasons. Some said that they wanted to learn to get to know more about their parents: their background, history and perspectives they brought from their home country, which had been largely suppressed since childhood.
A recurring theme is identity; that language learning is a journey to find out who they are, where they came from. But learning a language even if it is one familiar to you is extremely difficult. And with the expectations of one to learn a language that is common to their background its impossible to live up those standards. To somehow learn or relearn an entire complicated language so different from English in a couple of years?
It takes more than class time and regular class work. It takes outside work and practice and more than just a couple of classes. Most students tend to be uncommitted. While they would like to work on their language more, they are torn about time and efforts required to make progress. Also, a lack of confidence in their ability to speak undermines their desire to pass the language down to the future generations.
Does this mean that Indian languages, for example, will be increasingly uncommon with the third generation of South Asian Americans? And will it eventually disappear? I certainly hope not.
India’s rapid economic expansion, technological innovation and increasing political clout has amounted to a language that will likely have an even greater place in international business and politics than it does now. With India becoming a world power in the global marketplace, this is a useful skill for any person to have – translator, employee, native, or people looking for their roots.
Thirty-nine surveys, containing multiple choice and open-ended questions, were analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Instructors’ ratings show that heritage learners need less instruction than non-heritage learners in the following areas: pronunciation, word stress, verb conjugation, use of verbs in motion, and use of aspect. Heritage learners have more difficulties th-an non-heritage learners in code-switching, mixing vocabulary from incompatible registers and domains, use of borrowings from English, and use of inappropriate register.
To place heritage speakers together with non-heritage learners is to fail the needs of the former and to intimidate the latter. The term “heritage” speaker is used to refer to a student who is raised in a home where a non-English language is spoken, who speaks or merely understands the heritage language (Valdes 2000).
‘Heritage learners’
The broadest definition is given by Joshua Fishman (2001): for him, heritage language refers to any ancestral language such as indigenous, colonial, and immigrant languages, which may or may not be a language regularly used in the home and the community. It is based on “the association one establishes between one’s identity and the ancestral language” (Kondo-Brown 2).
It encompasses not only a second generation of South Asian-Americans studying Hindi, but also a part-Indian who has never heard Hindi spoken before learning Hindi.
Yet another definition of “heritage learners” is used to suggest the connection to past traditions and the maintenance of ancestral languages (Wiley & Valdes, 2000).
Many language educators and researchers, on the other hand, use the term heritage learners to refer to a learner who “is raised in a home where a non-English language is spoken” and who “speaks or at least understands the language who is to some degree bilingual in that language and in English” (Valdes 38). This definition is more restrictive in that it assumes significant exposure to the language and some level of proficiency in it.
The determination of heritage learners is complicated in its connections with issues of identity, proficiency and ethnicity. Which is more important – affiliation with an ethnolinguistic group or one’s proficiency in the target heritage language (Wiley, 2001)?
The growth of India as a whole complements the popularisation of Indian culture and knowledge of Indian art forms. Indian culture has greatly increased in prevalence and popularity over the last few decades. All aspects of Indian culture have manifested in various forms throughout popular American culture. From food to films, Indian culture can be seen everywhere.
The Indian Students Association or South Asian Student’s Association at many universities in the United States celebrates cultural week every semester, where they celebrate festivals like Diwali show and Holi. Putting together a culture show allows all kinds of people, whether they already are in touch with their background or aren’t, to be exposed to their music, language, literacy, entertainment, sports, politics, etc.
A language is more than just a means of communication. It is a repository of a community’s collective history and heritage. It also provides an identity and a focus that binds together a community for social togetherness, which makes individual accomplishments much easier.
Language is the essence and the identity of culture, and is the major tool for communication. To know your language is the key element in keeping and preserving the fundamental nature of your culture. In recent times the idea of cultural awareness in the US has increased thus allowing Indian languages to be more culturally accepted.
(The writer, a linguist, teaches at Washington University in St Louis, USA)