ERIC Number: EJ1333089
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2022
Pages: 12
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0143-4632
EISSN: N/A
Bilingual Youth's Language Choices and Attitudes towards Nahuatl in Santiago Tlaxco, Mexico
Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, v43 n2 p182-193 2022
The younger generations are considered one of the principal agents in the maintenance or shift of any language. In the cycle of the language maintenance, children learn their mother tongue, and pass it on to the future generations. The cycle is broken when they no longer speak the mother tongue. The language choices they make are particularly interesting in bi-/multilingual contact situations. This paper explores the language choices and attitudes of bilingual youth in the Nahuatl-speaking community of Tlaxco in Mexico. Bilingual participants, aged 12-17, completed a language questionnaire on their language use with 21 interlocutors and attitudes towards Nahuatl and Spanish. Results showed that the youth used Nahuatl predominately with only one interlocutor, their grandparents, although they expressed favourable opinions about Nahuatl. With other interlocutors, the language use was evenly distributed between only Spanish and both languages. These results indicate a need to expand the domains in which Nahuatl is used, starting with the parents in the home front. This study is the first to assess language use and attitudes of bilingual youth in Tlaxco.
Descriptors: Bilingualism, Language Usage, Spanish, Language Attitudes, American Indian Languages, Language Maintenance, Language Skill Attrition, Native Language, Mexicans, Secondary School Students, Parent Child Relationship, Grandparents, Family Environment, Foreign Countries, Student Attitudes
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Mexico
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A