heritage language

[ her-i-tij lang-gwij ]

noun
  1. a language used at home and spoken natively by the adults in a family, but often not fully acquired by subsequent generations whose schooling and other socialization occurs primarily in a different language, usually a dominant or official language in the surrounding society: I speak Polish as a heritage language, but I never studied it in school.: Compare native language.

Origin of heritage language

1
First recorded in 1975–80

Words Nearby heritage language

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024