Another of the talks that I found interesting at OWNAL was about people who understand their heritage language but don’t speak it, and talking about some of the reasons why this happens and how to make people feel more comfortable speaking. This is a really common situation for a lot of minority languages, and there are several names that people use for it, including passive speakers, fluent comprehenders, or receptive bilinguals.

One of the suggestions that I remember from the question period is that passive speakers may not feel comfortable speaking around Elders or other fluent speakers because they’re worried about speaking incorrectly, so there are people in one community who have organized small groups of people around the same age and comfort level who get together and talk in their language without anyone else around to get intimidated by.

I also found this very long but interesting article (it does have a table of contents though!) about heritage language learners of Spanish taking Spanish classes and the effects of their attitude towards learning and their identity. It’s not Mi’gmaq or even an Algonquian language, but some of the material is pretty general.