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: Compare native language ( def ).

   I speak Polish as a heritage language, but I never studied it in school.

Word History and Origins

Origin of heritage language¹

First recorded in 1975–80