Heritage Language Variation and Change in Toronto
For Speakers
A first-year student at U of Toronto wrote this:
Grandparents and parents criticizing the way younger speakers speak their heritage language has a huge influence on the speakers' confidence and therefore speech. I believe that this is a very common phenomenon for heritage language speakers and unfortunately one of the main reasons why these speakers (myself included) will resort to speaking English instead, in order to avoid the judgement and perhaps embarrassment of mispronunciation or grammatical errors in their speech. This is unfortunate as it is often to the dismay of the grandparents and parents that their offspring do not speak in their heritage language. They should be more aware of these implications.
A group of undergraduate students (from my TBB 199 course in 2016) prepared this Wikipedia report about resources and support for many Heritage Languages in Toronto.
If you are a speaker of a heritage language, or would like to learn to speak one of these languages, also check out these resources:
These webpages were created by first-year students at the University of Toronto. Please contact us if you'd like to suggest additions, etc.
They were contributed as follows:| Language | Design | Additional contributions from |
|---|---|---|
| Cantonese | Angie Chung | Yuyang Wu, Hu Zhe |
| Italian | Nancy Correia | Tsenat Keleta, Kathleen Walsh, Vanessa Zeoli |
| Korean | Han Sang-Ah | Ronnie Bhaskar, Priscilla Burley |
| Russian | Jerry Dyakov | Valeriya Mordvinova |
| Ukrainian | Cameron Abma | Mariana Kouzela |
