"How Do I Teach My Kids My Broken Armenian?": A Study of Eastern Armenian Heritage Language Speakers in Los Angeles
Introduces Armenian, specifically Eastern Armenian in Los Angeles, into the landscape of heritage languages in the United States, filling a gap in both heritage-language research and Armenian studies. It assesses the linguistic landscape of Armenians in Los Angeles, including the presence and use of the language and the visible signs of its loss, then examines incomplete acquisition among heritage speakers across phonology, morphology, register, and English borrowings, proposing domains of linguistic compartmentalization to describe patterns of use. A central finding concerns the persistent anxiety attached to speaking the heritage language and the damaging cycle that anxiety produces. The study closes on the inconsistent attitudes and beliefs surrounding Armenian, analyzed through competing majority and minority language ideologies. Data come from a corpus of in-depth interviews with college-age Eastern Armenian heritage learners.