Garcia, O. (2005) Positioning heritage languages in the United States. Modern language Journal 89 (5), 601-605.
Garcia discusses how she believes the term “heritage language” that has gained popularity recently in the United States has set back language minorities. She sees the term as something that refers to solely what was in the past instead of something that could be happening now or in the future. Spanish is one of the languages that many people in the United States were learning who weren’t immigrants. In addition, many Spanish speakers were immigrating to the country. This led to an English Only movement, but leaves the question of whether Spanish can be considered a heritage language of the United States. Garcia speaks about how Spanish was present in the United States before English. The shift in language from bilingual to heritage tongue is also an important distinction she mentions. Finally, she talks about how although the term “heritage language” can be problematic at times, it has opened up door in the US Education system. There are now a number of schools that are able to provide education to students in heritage tongues, which has helped language revitalization. I see the term “heritage language” not as detrimental but as beneficial, so I suppose I would disagree with Garcia here. I think the term “heritage” captures a lot of what language really is, especially to Native Americans. From the perspective of Native Americans, language is not simply words. Instead, it holds powerful stories and history that cannot be translated to other languages. For instance, in one native language, the numbers 1, 2, and 3 recount their creation story. These are powerful ties to the past that words such as “bilingual” don’t hold.
Hinton, L. (1998) Language loss and revitalization in California: Overview. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 132 (1), 83-93.
Hinton starts by speaking of the language endangerment in California. Of the 98 languages originally spoken there, 45 now have no speakers at all. The other 36 only have elderly speakers. The linguistic decline is closely tied with colonization during the gold rush. 90 percent of their population was wiped out, and then federally funded boarding schools were created to root out Native American culture, language, and traditions. Although elderly speakers remained, many chose not to pass on the language because of the harsh punishments inflicted on them at the federally funded boarding schools whenever they spoke in heritage languages. By choosing not to pass on the language to their children, they hoped to save them punishment. In the 1970s, the first efforts of bilingual education were started, but funding was an issue. Eventually, a committee called Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival came about. This committee implemented a model called the “Master-Apprentice” program. The goal of this program was to join together older speakers that are fluent in an indigenous language with young people willing to learn. For a five year period of time, these individuals would share knowledge and do many things together. They have requirements such as writing, language classes, language gatherings, immersion camps, and general usage. The Master-Apprentice program has been very successful in increasing the number of young fluent speakers in California. Hinton also talks about the imperfection of this system. Although the number of young speakers has increased, the languages are changing. The young speakers have English accents and change the languages grammatically to match English. Despite the imperfections, the increase in young speakers should be seen as progress for California.