Entry posted in observance of International Mother Language Day, February 21.

If you’re a Polish kid, you’ve played “berek”. I didn’t know what berek was until I watched my son play it with friends (it’s basically “tag”, but it can have certain rules depending on what the kids make up). One way to think about the heritage speaker experience is to observe monolingual kids in their natural environment (e.g., school, playground). This sort of comparison gives you a sense of what the heritage speaker might have missed, depending on the age at which they were separated from the speech community. If you’re a careful observer, you’ll notice the richness of language when there is a community of monolingual speakers. Even simple games elicit a lot of language such as negotiation about the rules of the game, playful teasing, comparisons between players, etc. For my son, playing tag in any language is great fun, but there is something sweet in knowing that he had the opportunity I missed—to experience it as “berek”.