heritage language
[ her-i-tij lang-gwij ]
noun
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
1First recorded in 1975–80
Words Nearby heritage language
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
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