The Fluent Show

Do you know someone who grew up speaking a language at home as a child, but never fully developed it because their environment wasn't able to support it? This community of speakers who grow up with a different dominant language is called heritage language speakers. They are often found in immigrant communities. In fact, here in the UK there are many thousands of them all over the country. In this episode, I spoke to academics Petros Karatsareas and Katie Harrison who study heritage and community languages here in the UK. We talked about the conditions that create non-mainstream language environments the identities of learning these languages as a migrant why heritage learners exist in their own category of language learner complementary schools providing extra language education often on Saturdays and evenings. These schools are volunteer-run and bridge the gap that often exists between the heritage language and the mainstream education a child receives. We also talked about what is different when you app