"heritage speakers"

[David J Birnbaum]

> ... after refering to them among colleagues w/ the
> pejorative term "nativoids" ...

Pejorative? I first heard this term from Katja Chvany, who used it to
describe her own Russian competence in the preface to her 1975 "On the
Syntax of BE-sentences in Russian": "My late parents, to whom this book is
dedicated, equipped me with the Russian language, and then helped bridge
the gap between nativoid and native competence ...." I did not perceive
anything pejorative in her terminology; I understood her to mean simply
"native-like in many respects, but nonetheless not native." Is this not
the meaning of -oid ("indicating likeness, resemblance, or similarity"
--American Heritage Dictionary)?

--David
==================================================
Professor David J. Birnbaum      djbpitt+ at pitt.edu
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