I live in a country that in the past had an intense flow of immigration to my home country, creating a huge diaspora, causing many descendants of the diaspora to move back here for better quality of life or economical reasons.
(TL)
I am not a descendant myself, I happened to marry a local and moved here a few years ago. I have two children I’m raising in here and I make sure they learn my mother language, their heritage language, by teaching them and speaking strictly on my language (which I’m being successful at) while they’re fully immersed in the local language in the school and everyday life. At home me and my wife communicate in English and our kids are slowly absorbing English as well as attending English classe.
Now my point, I have a few friends who are descendants on 2nd and 3rd generations who made their way back and are not seen as locals, even though they believe so. A few of those friends said they will not bother teaching their kids our mother language because their lives are here, which I consider something deeply egoistical if not plainly dumb. I don’t think the language belongs to the father or mother per s, but to the child, the parent has only the obligation to pass it along.
I was raised in the advice that both my parents came from the working class and managed to grow a few steps in the social class stair, therefore I have to manage to at least keep the life conditions they achieved and provide to my kids what was provided to me. On the same token I see it as families who manage to leave their kids some wealth/estate, therefore the recipients of such inheritance should strive to keep it and pass it along to their kids who should manage to grow it or at least preserve it for the next generations, so they should do the same for the language.
What is your take on this?
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