Social and Linguistic Perspectives
from Part I - Heritage Languages around the World
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 November 2021
Continental West Germanic and North Germanic languages have been spoken in the Americas for several hundred years, and many are alive as heritage languages today, though often used only by elderly speakers. This chapter examines these languages from several perspectives. First, we look at social and historical contexts of bilingualism. Second, we describe the varieties used, e.g., the extent to which people knew a standard language, along with associated language attitudes and ideologies. Third, we look at key structural properties of Germanic heritage languages with examples from phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, pragmatics, and the lexicon, revealing parallels in development and change across languages. Finally, we note some patterns and language maintenance and shift.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.