Abstract
It is well known that migration has an effect on language use and language choice. If the language of origin is maintained after migration, it tends to change in the new contact setting. Often, migrants shift to the new majority language within few generations. The current paper examines a diary corpus containing data from three generations of one German-Canadian family, ranging from 1867 to 1909, and covering the second to fourth generation after immigration. The paper analyzes changes that can be observed between the generations, with respect to the language system as well as to the individuals’ decision on language choice. The data not only offer insight into the dynamics of acquiring a written register of a heritage language, and the eventual shift to the majority language. They also allow us to identify different linguistic profiles of heritage speakers within one community. It is discussed how these profiles can be linked to the individuals’ family backgrounds and how the combination of these backgrounds may have contributed to giving up the heritage language in favor of the majority language.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Anita Auer, Joshua Brown, Ryan Carroll, Kristine Horner, Karoline Kühl, Grit Liebscher, Sam Schirm, Horst Simon, Rosemarie Tracy and two anonymous reviewers for their feedback and their valuable comments on this paper. Needless to say, all remaining shortcomings are my responsibility.
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Articles in the same Issue
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- Historical heritage language ego-documents: From home, from away, and from below
- Civil War writings of the Pennsylvania Dutch
- Letters home: German-American Civil War soldiers’ letters 1864–1865
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- Canadian heritage German across three generations: A diary-based study of language shift in action
- Book Review
- Schaeken Jos: Voices on Birchbark. Everyday Communication in Medieval Russia (Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics 43)
- Simeon Dekker: Old Russian Birchbark Letters. A Pragmatic Approach (Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics 42)
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- Denkler Markus, Stephan Elspaß, Dagmar Hüpper and Elvira Topalović: Deutsch im 17. Jahrhundert: Studien zu Sprachkontakt, Sprachvariation und Sprachwandel. Gedenkschrift für Jürgen Macha (Sprache – Literatur und Studien zur Linguistik/Germanistik 46)
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Historical heritage language ego-documents: From home, from away, and from below
- Civil War writings of the Pennsylvania Dutch
- Letters home: German-American Civil War soldiers’ letters 1864–1865
- Varying social roles and networks on a family farm: Evidence from Swedish immigrant letters, 1880s to 1930s
- “Sollte dies mein Geschreibsel meine theure Heymath erreichen”: Linguistic variation in the diary of a nineteenth-century Swiss German migrant
- Canadian heritage German across three generations: A diary-based study of language shift in action
- Book Review
- Schaeken Jos: Voices on Birchbark. Everyday Communication in Medieval Russia (Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics 43)
- Simeon Dekker: Old Russian Birchbark Letters. A Pragmatic Approach (Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics 42)
- Derek Offord, Vladislav Rjéoutski and Gesine Argent: The French Language in Russia: A Social, Political, Cultural, and Literary History (Languages and Culture in History)
- Beal Joan C. and Sylvie Hancil: Perspectives on Northern Englishes (Topics in English Linguistics 96)
- Denkler Markus, Stephan Elspaß, Dagmar Hüpper and Elvira Topalović: Deutsch im 17. Jahrhundert: Studien zu Sprachkontakt, Sprachvariation und Sprachwandel. Gedenkschrift für Jürgen Macha (Sprache – Literatur und Studien zur Linguistik/Germanistik 46)