The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics - November 2021

Mountain Jewish immigrants to Israel from the Eastern Caucasus used two heritage languages, Juhuri (Judeo-Tat) and Russian. Juhuri was their home and Russian the societal languages prior to migration. In Israel, Juhuri and Russian are Heritage Languages and Hebrew is the societal language. The present study reports on frequency of use and codeswitching behaviour across three generations of Mountain Jewish speakers in order to account for patterns of language maintenance and language shift (LMLS). Audio-recorded conversations were collected from six female middle-generation speakers (G1.5: ages 33–50) with their mothers (G1: ages 60–75) and children (G2: ages 9–21). Findings for language use showed significant cross-generational differences, where use of both Russian and Juhuri declined and use of Hebrew increased across generations. Juhuri was maintained only among G1 participants, G1.5 speakers using it mainly for comprehension and G2 speakers abandoning it entirely. G1.5 participants maintained Russian for interaction with parents but did not use it with their children, for whom Hebrew was the dominant means of communication. Code-switching data showed the same overall shift to Hebrew with some maintenance of Russian among G1.5 speakers. Results are discussed in terms of LMLS and motivations for code-switching.

Ethnic identity (EI) and language attitudes have been researched from different schools of thought, and very few studies sought to explore the nature of the relationship between these constructs (H...

Mountain Jews (MJs), native of the eastern Caucasus, mass immigrated in the 1990s to Israel and the US. MJs brought with them two heritage languages (HLs): Russian, the language of wider communication in the former Soviet Union, and Juhuri, their traditional home language. The present study explores the effects of HL attitudes on proficiency among 146 Israeli and 138 American MJs differing in age (M = 35.42) and in education level. A questionnaire based on a triadic attitude model comprised of Affective, Behavioral, and Cognitive items was used to examine the impact of language attitudes on self-rated Comprehension and Production of the two HLs. Results showed more positive attitudes toward Russian than Juhuri in both Israel and the US, with highest values registered for the Affective component. Attitudes toward Russian did not differ across countries, whereas attitudes toward Juhuri were more positive in the US. Attitudes predicted proficiency of Russian better than Juhuri and better in Israel than in the US. The findings are discussed in light of societal and cultural differences between Israel and the US, in terms of ethnolinguistic vitality and the status of the societal languages, as well as the implications of the unique attitude structure of the two HLs in the two countries.