# Heritage language is not a detour *Written 5 August 2026.* At first, a *music session for immigrant families run in their heritage language* might not sound like a route into the life of a new country. I have heard that thought voiced more than once. But treating support for a family's heritage language and culture and the learning of a new country's language as competing rather than complementary is a mistake. I made this argument in Montreal on 31 July 2026, on a panel called *Musicking with Very Young Children*, led by Amanda Niland with Helga Rut Gudmundsdottir, Jessica Pitt and me. This note covers only one part of that talk: a principle rather than a finding. ## The approach *Tónagull po polsku* runs weekly [[Family musicking]] sessions in Reykjavík for Polish-speaking families with children from birth to four. It is built on the Icelandic Tónagull, established by Helga Rut Gudmundsdottir in 2004, and the Polish-language version was launched in 2019 around traditional Polish songs, rhymes and games.[^1] You can also read about it in [[Re-becoming musical]]. The structure of the Polish sessions is nearly identical to the Icelandic original: circular seating, shared instrument play, repetitive routines, singing, movement. What changed was the language and the repertoire. In my presentation I talked about what Helga and I called the **Heritage Language Approach**: the *deliberate use of a community's heritage language and repertoire* in early childhood music sessions. ## Why it is not a detour The heritage language is not competing with the language of the new home country. Studies show that good knowledge of the heritage language is associated with better academic achievement, communicative ability and wellbeing of children (Clark, 2000; Cummins, 2001),[^2] and is also reported to have positive impact on a child's self-image (Cavazos-Rehg & DeLucia-Waack, 2009; Lee, 2020).[^3] UNESCO treats the right to learn one's heritage language as universal (Anderson et al., 2024).[^4] Moreover, competence developed in a child's heritage language transfers to and supports acquisition of the new language, a principle Cummins (2021) calls the interdependence hypothesis, drawn from four decades of research on multilingual education.[^5] The picture is not uncomplicated: Bialystok (2018) finds the cognitive effects of maintaining two languages more variable than early formulations suggested.[^6] But the direction is clear enough. The *heritage language is a foundation the new language builds on*, not a rival to it. *But it can be more than that.* A shared repertoire in a heritage language does work that a recording at home cannot. It can be a way of reaching back into a cultural treasury that people feel separated from once they live abroad, and of reaching it together rather than alone: putting on children's TV programmes from the old country is not the same thing as singing in a room full of people who know the songs. It can be a way of keeping up a relationship with relatives who stayed behind, when the same repertoire starts turning up in a video call. And it can do something a parent may struggle to manage alone, which is to make singing in a language the child hears nowhere else an ordinary shared activity rather than an effort one family has to sustain on its own.[^7] *The room itself can become something too.* Parents who arrive without extended family nearby, and who find the ordinary channels of a new country difficult to enter, may find in a weekly session the beginnings of a network. That shift tends to be visible before anyone names it, in how much longer it starts taking people to leave.[^7] ## What follows The Heritage Language Approach does not refer to a single programme for Polish families in Iceland. It is a *design principle*, and it is available to anyone running family musicking sessions anywhere the families arriving speak a language other than the one the institution runs in. ## The paper The full account will soon be available in a paper written with Helga Rut Gudmundsdottir, in press with *Music Education Research*.[^8] It is a qualitative survey study: open-ended responses from Polish-speaking parents in Reykjavík, analysed thematically, alongside descriptive statistics from a set of Likert-type questions. It asks what motivated parents to enrol in sessions held in their heritage language, how they experienced their own and their children's participation, and what part the heritage language itself played in all of that. It also considers what follows for anyone designing early childhood music provision in a linguistically diverse setting. A related chapter with Helga, on the circle setting in family music groups, is also in press.[^9] [^1]: Gudmundsdottir, H. R., & Gudmundsdottir, D. G. (2010). Parent–infant music courses in Iceland: Perceived benefits and mental well-being of mothers. *Music Education Research, 12*(3), 299–309. https://doi.org/10.1080/14613808.2010.505644 [^2]: Clark, B. A. (2000). First- and second-language acquisition in early childhood. In *Issues in early childhood education: Curriculum, teacher education, & dissemination of information. Proceedings of the Lilian Katz Symposium* (pp. 181–188). https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED470889 · Cummins, J. (2001). Bilingual children's mother tongue: Why is it important for education. *Sprogforum*. [^3]: Cavazos-Rehg, P. A., & DeLucia-Waack, J. L. (2009). Education, ethnic identity, and acculturation as predictors of self-esteem in Latino adolescents. *Journal of Counseling & Development, 87*(1), 47–54. · Lee, S. (2020). Does identity matter for adaptation? The influence of acculturation identity on the well-being and delinquency of adolescent students in Europe. *Journal of Youth Studies, 23*(6), 797–817. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2019.1636950 [^4]: Anderson, J., Argyri, E., Ashtari, N., Cannizzaro, G., Egnatz, L., Emilsson Peskova, R., Hristozova, M., Little, S., Mehmedbegovic-Smith, D., Nahodilova, J., Paulovicova, N., & Wahlin, M. (2024). *Global call for action for heritage language education*. Heritage Language Global Think Tank. [^5]: Cummins, J. (2021). *Rethinking the education of multilingual learners: A critical analysis of theoretical concepts*. Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.22730517 [^6]: Bialystok, E. (2018). Bilingual education for young children: Review of the effects and consequences. *International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 21*(6), 666–679. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2016.1203859 [^7]: These observations draw on interviews conducted as part of my doctoral research with Polish-speaking families in Iceland, not on the survey study described below. They are reported in Switala, A., & Gudmundsdottir, H. R. *Family musicking with immigrant parents and toddlers: Experiences of Polish parents in Iceland*. Manuscript under review. Participants' names and their children's names are withheld here. [^8]: Switala, A., & Gudmundsdottir, H. R. (in press). *The Heritage Language Approach in family music sessions: Perspectives of immigrant parents*. *Music Education Research*. [^9]: Gudmundsdottir, H. R., & Switala, A. *Promoting feelings of inclusion in family music groups for immigrant families: Expanding the parent–infant dyad to the singing circle*. Book chapter, in press.