Polish as a Heritage Language Around the World Selected Diaspora Communities

Polish as a Heritage Language Around the World provides a timely insight into Polish diaspora communities around the world and their endeavours in heritage language maintenance and education.

This edited collection depicts and analyses the unique challenges associated with the intergenerational transmission of Polish as a language that has not had high visibility and status in the surrounding society. Chapters within the volume examine how these circumstances impact the maintenance of the heritage language and affect the capacity to support biliteracy development among younger generations of speakers.

Offering an overview of key concepts and theoretical issues, practical pedagogical guidance, and field-advancing suggestions for further research, Polish as a Heritage Language Around the World will be of interest to researchers and instructors of Polish around the world as well as those interested in second language acquisition and heritage language studies.

Foreword

Introduction: The Polish Language Scattered All Over the Globe

PART I: EUROPE

Chapter 1. Changing Faces of the Polish Diaspora in the United Kingdom

Chapter 2. A Differentiated Picture of Polish in Germany

Chapter 3. The Polish Population and its Language in Sweden

Chapter 4. Polish Heritage Speakers in Norway: Attitudes, Use and Maintenance

Chapter 5. Multilingualism of the Polish Minority in Ukraine

PART II: THE AMERICAS

Chapter 6. Poles and Their Language in the US “Melting Pot”: how Polish is preserved and/or lost in Chicago

Chapter 7. The Polish Language and Culture Maintenance in Canada “Scented with Resin”

Chapter 8. “We have to respect the language people speak” – Polish heritage language and its speakers in Brazil

Chapter 9. The Status of the Polish Language in the Polish Community of Argentina: A Historical and Contemporary Perspective

PART III: OTHER CONTINENTS

Chapter 10. The Presence of the Polish Language in the Polish Diaspora Communities of North Africa: Focusing on The Aspects of Education

Chapter 11. The Polish Diaspora in the Republic of South Africa: The Case of Polish as a Heritage Language

Chapter 12. Maintenance of Heritage Language and Culture in the Polish Diaspora Communities in Australia

Bringing It All Together: The Maintenance of the Polish Language Outside of Poland

Piotr Romanowski holds a PhD and a post-doctoral degree in linguistics. He is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Applied Linguistics, the University of Warsaw, Poland. His academic interests sit at the intersection of multilingual education and sociolinguistics. He is chief editor of Journal of Multilingual Theories and Practices and the book series Language Learning and Multilingualism. He is the founding member of MultiLingNet. In the academic year 2022/23 he was a Research Fellow at University College London.

Anna Seretny is an applied linguists and Professor at the Polish Faculty, the Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland. She has an extensive record of research and publications on vocabulary learning in Polish as a foreign and heritage language. Her major academic interests are language learning and teaching, heritage language maintenance and education.