What We Do

Our Mission

he Heritage Language Story Project (HLSP) seeks to raise awareness about the importance of maintaining heritage languages. It encourages the intergenerational transmission of heritage languages, helping to promote heritage language maintenance. HLSP solicits stories from heritage language speakers, about their experiences with their language, through structured prompts. The stories, which depict the lived experiences of heritage language speakers, can normalize feelings of other heritage speakers and provide tools to stay connected to the heritage language. The stories can support an emotional connection to the heritage language, which can lead to a greater willingness to engage with the language. In addition, the stories provide valuable resources for research aimed at identifying tools that promote maintenance of heritage languages.

While there have been some small projects, focused on specific heritage languages, which allow the participants to speak freely about their lives, there has not been a project to date, which solicits the stories of heritage language speakers of a variety of languages about their experiences with their home language.

The goal of this project is to archive the stories and create a database where people can find stories in many heritage languages. The stories can be used by other heritage language speakers to create a sense of community, teachers who work with heritage language speakers, students wanting to learn more about heritage languages, and researchers who want to understand more about heritage language use and prevent their decline.

“The Heritage Language Story Project encourages people to maintain their heritage language, which strengthens their connection to their history, people, traditions— in short, to their culture.”

What We’ve Achieved

  • Created a data base to archive stories about heritage languages and their meaning to heritage language speakers.

  • Provided a way for people to act to help maintain their heritage language by contributing a story.

  • Enabled people to hear stories from other heritage language speakers to normalize feelings and provide support.

  • Created a resource list people can use to learn more about efforts to maintain heritage languages.

  • Provided data that researchers can use to study people’s feelings about their heritage language that can help with heritage language maintenance programs and interventions.