The Acquisition of Heritage Languages
Abstract
Heritage speakers are native speakers of a minority language they learn at home, but due to socio-political pressure from the majority language spoken in their community, their heritage language does not fully develop. In the last decade, the acquisition of heritage languages has become a central focus of study within linguistics and applied linguistics. This work centres on the grammatical development of the heritage language and the language learning trajectory of heritage speakers, synthesizing recent experimental research. The Acquisition of Heritage Languages offers a global perspective, with a wealth of examples from heritage languages around the world. Written in an accessible style, this authoritative and up-to-date text is essential reading for professionals, students, and researchers of all levels working in the fields of sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, education, language policies and language teaching.
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This relative lack of input leads to distinctive features of heritage Spanish that make it stand out from the 'real Spanish' spoken by monolinguals.
“This relative lack of input leads to the distinctive features of heritage Spanish (Montrul, 2015) that can make it stand out as distinctively different from the “real Spanish” spoken by monolinguals in Colombia, Dominican Republic, Mexico, and so on.”
From Sounds Like Politics: Cardi B and the Discourse of Español Ratatá (2026) · cites this paper as Montrul, 2015
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Sounds Like Politics: Cardi B and the Discourse of Español Ratatá
Delgado, R., Mora-Moreno, S., & Cervantes-Gómez, X. V. (2026) · Latino Studies · doi:10.1057/s41276-026-00579-w
- Authors
- Montrul, S.
- Affiliations
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US)
- Corresponding author
- Montrul, Silvina
- ORCID
- Montrul, Silvina
- Venue
- Cambridge University Press eBooks
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- Published
- 2015-12-03
- OpenAlex
- W2410673670
- Cited by
- 900
- References
- 12
- Citations by year
- 2026: 48 · 2025: 83 · 2024: 142 · 2023: 86 · 2022: 97 · 2021: 97 · 2020: 127 · 2019: 88 · 2018: 69 · 2017: 36 · 2016: 26 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 31.15
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Cambridge University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Linguistics and Language › Multilingual Education and Policy
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning
- Keywords
- heritage language, heritage speakers, language acquisition, grammatical development, language learning trajectories, minority languages, language shift, language maintenance, language policy, language teaching
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