diaspora vs homeland discourse re:language is interesting bc it highlights a lot of my own discomfort even before i had the words to describe it

a thread/stream of consciousness bc i have been seeing some blegh discourse lately:

1/

authenticity of homeland lang over heritage lang: "heritage speech is whitewashed/watered down", passing off actual dialectal variation (ie: unrounding of /y/ in various canto varieties) as a deficiency in heritage speech, coinages in the homeland are a-okay but not abroad

2/

white trophying + subsequent shaming: "look, this white guy can speak X fluently, why are we such disgraces" (completely forgetting the social factors for why heritage speakers are the way they are, and the immense privilege of being able to learn a language for fun...

3/

...without the emotional baggage and cultural shame of losing your culture looming over you). ive even encountered white folx (fluent in Language X) entering POC spaces and joining in on the heritage speaker shaming, which angers me to my very core ;;

4/

authority over native speaker status: "you're not even a real native speaker if you don't know x y and z", throwing heritage speakers and L2 learners in the same bin, and "you're not a native speaker unless we deem you to be one".

5/

this also interacts with patriotism/nationalism and its intersection with heritage language (see: mandarin/china, tagalog/the philippines - both are problematic cases bc you also have diaspora kids who speak non-mandarin chinese varieties and non-tagalog philippine languages)

6/

and bc these national langs are closely intertwined w ethnic identity, shaming heritage speakers for not being "authentic" to homeland standards is ironically one of the main sources of cultural shame, which pushes ppl to further distance themselves from their cultures/langs.

7/

there are also issues with heritage lang curricula (introducing diglossia to kids who dont have any exposure to formal registers, using homeland curricula, very little focus on spontaneous/natural speech, lumping canto/hakka/hokkien speaking kids into mandarin classes)

8/

ugh there's just so much that needs to be fixed, but the boomers who run these lang institutions dont get it bc "this is how we learned it back home, so it must work for these kids too"

//looks at the thousands of kids who drop out of saturday school bc they get discouraged

9/

tl;dr heritage speakers are valid speakers and have unique language needs that must be accounted for in a pedagogical framework ! ! ! !

sigh this'll never reach the homeland speakers and educators who need to understand this but wHATEVER

/end