Chudoba, Barbara

Heritage language preservation or conversely, a language shift (a loss or decrease of language proficiency) can directly impact a minority ethnic group's integration into a host society. Multiple theories and studies have demonstrated that students from an ethnic group who are encouraged to celebrate their ethnicity and practice their heritage language have better relationships with parents and peers and overall are more academically and cognitively advanced, less likely to commit crimes and have more economic opportunities available to them. In short, these individuals would seem more likely to successfully integrate into a host country's society. Therefore, looking at the Vietnamese community in the Czech Republic I attempted to gauge the standing of Vietnamese as a heritage language within this ethnic community by using qualitative research to better understand the existing sociolinguistic landscape. Ultimately, what I determined from my research is that heritage language preservation can act as a barrier to integration for the first generation if retaining the heritage language comes at the expense of learning the host country's language. However, for the later generations, a language shift is occurring which might actually hinder integration in the long run. Keywords Heritage language,...

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