ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews research on how childhood experience with two heritage languages (Spanish and Korean) may help adults learn or re-learn the language they once knew. It compares two kinds of heritage language learners—childhood hearers and childhood speakers—with native speakers of the language and with typical late second language (L2) learners who had no regular exposure to the language until adolescence. Plan A for salvaging heritage languages is to get children to speak them regularly beyond early childhood. Plan B will be to identify the strengths and weaknesses of older heritage language learners and re-learners through research. Plan B for salvaging heritage languages is to know teachers’ strengths and weaknesses, build on the strengths, and deal with the weaknesses squarely. If childhood overhearing has lasting and measurable benefits for phonology, childhood overhearers should sound better than typical late-L2-learners.
