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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Most Americans don’t speak their “heritage” language. I don’t speak German or French, the languages of some of my ancestors. It’s ok. It happens eventually to almost everyone. [/quote]

That's very different and you know it.  [/quote]

Not really. My friends from Boston whose parents were first generation Italian all spoke Italian but their kids don’t They do know how to make amazing cutlets and pasta dishes.

Traditionally, the immigrant generation teaches the home language to their kids. That could be through use at home or through language school or through cultural events. The first born generation ends up speaking the language but normally isn’t fully fluent or can speak it and not read it type thing. The second generation rarely learns more than a few phrases because the US is home and people speak English. People are not traveling back to the home country to see family annually because they don’t know the family any more. It is hard to maintain the native language because it isn’t used enough and it isn’t seen as important by the families.

It is not unusual that the second generation of immigrants don’t speak the language and end up relating to their culture through food and traditional holidays that they don’t celebrate the same way. See just about every group who has immigrated to the US in the last 200 years. The same thing is going to happen with the Chinese, Korean, and Indian families coming to the US now. It has been happening with Hispanic families for ages, there is just a more regular number of Hispanic families coming to the US because the US is close by. [/quote]

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