Catalan as a Heritage Language in Germany

Amelia Jiménez-Gaspar,Laia Arnaus Gil

doi:10.3390/languages7010043

Amelia Jiménez-Gaspar, Laia Arnaus Gil

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7010043

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Abstract

Germany is currently the third country with more Catalan residents mainly characterized as families with children born in Germany but raised with Catalan as heritage language (HL). Only few studies have investigated Catalan as an HL in Germany. Our study tries to fill this gap with spontaneous recordings of 16 bilingual and trilingual children (mean age 5;7). In terms of language competence (measured via MLU), balanced bilingualism is present in most children (44%), followed by those showing a dominance into German (38%). Interestingly, regarding language use (measured in w/minute), both balanced and Catalan dominants were fluent in both L1s similarly, while the German dominant group mostly prefer German. Moreover, the parents filled in a questionnaire on current and cumulative input from which some factors were examined such as family language policies (FLP), child’s language choice to the Catalan-speaking parent, Catalan skills of the non-native parent, family language and frequency of comprehension and production activities. In a nutshell, the results show that FLP and HL as FL or no FL seem to have an impact in the child’s grammatical development in the very early years, as opposed to family language. Children mostly direct their speech in the HL when talking to the Catalan-speaking parent.

Highlights

Little is known about the Catalan-speaking community in Germany
We wanted to describe the Catalan community in the diaspora, in Germany, and present those studies that have contributed to a better understanding of the transmission, promotion, and acquisition of Catalan as an heritage language (HL) outside the Catalan-speaking regions of Spain
We summarized the previous literature on HL promotion, and examined some input quantity and quality factors in a study carried out with sixteen bi- and trilingual children, mostly raised with Catalan as an HL in Hamburg (Germany)

Summary

Introduction

According to the Statistic Centres of the three Catalan-speaking autonomous communities in Spain (IDESCAT 2020; IBESTAT 2020; PEGV 2020), Germany is the third country worldwide, after France and Argentina, to be chosen by Catalans from Catalan-speaking regions in. Spain as their (new) country of residence. According to the Spanish National Institute of Statistics (INE), this community in Germany is composed predominantly of Catalan (young) adult speakers between 16 and 64 (around 28,000), followed by those under 16.

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