Raising Bilingual Children in English Abroad: Why English as a Heritage Language is “Different”

If you’re raising bilingual children in English abroad, living in Spain, France, Germany, or anywhere else where English is the minority language at home, you’ve probably come across a lot of bilingual parenting advice that doesn’t quite fit your situation.

Maybe the advice you get about it being difficult and having to stay consistent is way off from your experience. Or maybe the opposite is true.

And it’s not because the advice is wrong. It’s because English as a heritage language is genuinely, completely structurally different from almost every other heritage language scenario, and very few people know that.

This topic hits close to home. Before founding Bringing Up Bilinguals, this is exactly the research I was doing in my PhD! And one that, given the reach of English, researchers have focused very little on.

What I found in my research is that English heritage families face a unique set of dynamics. What I translated this to mean for you is that the standard playbook for raising bilingual children often doesn’t apply and in some cases, can point you in the wrong direction entirely.

This post is your comprehensive guide to what English as a heritage language actually looks like, what the research says about outcomes, and what this means practically for your family.

First things first: What Is a Heritage Language?

A heritage language is a language that a child develops at home as a minority language, in a context where a different language is dominant in society. Heritage speakers grow up hearing, and often speaking, both their home language and the majority language from early childhood, and typically shift toward the majority language once they start school or daycare.

In most heritage language scenarios, the minority language is, well, a minority language in every sense: fewer speakers, lower social prestige, less institutional support. The most researched and maybe the combo that comes up in your head is Spanish at home in an English-speaking country, but it might also be Arabic at home in a French-speaking one or a million other combos.

English heritage families flip this entirely.

In fact, when a colleague and I put “when English is in the minority” as part of a title on an academic paper, we were told to reword it as “English isn’t really a minority language“.

And it’s true that English isn’t the typical minority language. A child developing English is developing the world’s most-taught language, with global prestige and institutional support as the minority home language. Which changes nearly everything about how development unfolds, what challenges arise, and what support actually helps.

Why English Heritage Is Different From Every Other Heritage Language

1. The prestige paradox

English has a unique global status. It’s the international lingua franca, spoken by over 1.5 billion people worldwide and the vast majority of them are non-native speakers. Parents who speak English at home in non-English-speaking countries almost always regard it as a valuable asset for their children’s future, and wider society tends to view it favourably too. There’s no eyes on you at the playground wondering why you’re teaching that language to your child.

You might expect this prestige to give English a significant advantage over other heritage languages in terms of transmission and maintenance. But research suggests otherwise. Studies of English heritage speakers in Norway found no significant difference in transmission rates between English and German (two high status heritage languages) both followed the same patterns of attrition and majority-language dominance by age five.[4] Despite its global reach and prestige, English still follows the same basic heritage language trajectory when it’s the minority home language. It seems that “Even high-prestige and ubiquitous languages such as English are not immune to the asymmetric development patterns typical of heritage languages.”

2. School adds English input rather than competing with it

In almost every other heritage language context, school (or daycare) is the moment everything shifts. It’s when the majority language floods in, exposure to the home language drops dramatically, and families have to work hardest to maintain the minority language. The typical advice of doing more at home, finding the community, and using the language deliberately is built around this dynamic.

For English heritage families in most of the world, school adds English input even if the quality varies greatly. English is a mandatory subject in 142 countries and optional in 41 more.[3] In places like Catalonia, where my research was based, children receive English instruction from primary school onward, and many schools especially semi and fully private use English as a medium of instruction entirely through Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL).[5] School adds English exposure rather than taking it away.

This sounds like great news and it is! But it also means the advice about maximizing home input and fighting against school erosion doesn’t map onto your situation the same way. The levers and balance for the language are different.

3. The quality of home input is more varied

In most heritage language families, the parent speaking the minority language does so because it’s their first language. They’re a native speaker, and the child is receiving native-quality input at home.

English heritage families are far more varied. Some children have two native English-speaking parents. Some have one. And a significant number are raised by parents who speak English to their child not because it’s their mother tongue, but as a deliberate choice to give their child access to English aka non-native speakers using English as the home language.

This matters because research shows that native and non-native input are not equivalent for language development. Non-native speakers tend to use fewer complex grammatical structures, less diverse vocabulary, and may have different phonological patterns.[9][10] Children do replicate patterns from their input, including patterns that diverge from native norms.[6] This is not a negative thing at ALL! But it is interesting the greater variety of exposure that English-speaking children may have based on the speakers around them and what it might mean for their development. This is one of the most under-explored dimensions of heritage language development.

What Does English Heritage Language Development Actually Look Like?

Heritage language development is rarely uniform and varies between children and within children’s own language abilities. Children develop what we call asymmetric language systems meaning they’re stronger in some areas, weaker in others and English heritage children are no exception.[1][2] Here’s what the research tells us about outcomes across different language domains (skills).

🗣️ Phonology & Accent

Often a relative strength of heritage speakers. Children with sufficient home input tend to develop native-like pronunciation. However, reduced home input, particularly below 50% of daily language exposure, can decelerate phonological development making it less native-like, even when school English is available.[1]

📚 Receptive Vocabulary

Generally within monolingual normative range when exposure to the language is adequate. Children receiving 40–60% English exposure can achieve comparable receptive vocabulary scores to monolinguals in tasks that involve understanding vocabulary.[12]

💬 Expressive Vocabulary

Expressive skills (speaking and writing) are the domains most affected by bilingualism. Children consistently show weaker expressive vocabulary in English compared to monolinguals. A finding that holds across heritage languages, including English, regardless of prestige.[2][13]

🧠 Grammar

Variable, and sensitive to both input quantity and quality. Earlier-acquired structures tend to be more robust; later-acquired, more complex grammar is more susceptible to reduced or non-native input.[7][8]

It’s also important to understand is that scoring within monolingual normative ranges doesn’t mean identical development. Heritage systems develop asymmetrically and a child can appear “fine” on standardized testing while having real gaps in productive language ability that only become apparent in naturalistic use.[2] A child might also perform poorly on a linguistic test with a researcher but appear perfectly fine with those who interact with them often (like you their parents!!)

The Rarity of English: Struggling With the Community Language?

Here is where English heritage families face something genuinely unique and something I have never seen documented for any other heritage language group! It’s actually not even technically documented for English heritage speakers but it comes up in my consultations on a fairly regualar basis.

In every other heritage language context, when a child struggles, they struggle with the heritage (home) language. The majority language, the one dominant in society and at school, is essentially always fine. That’s the baseline assumption underlying almost all heritage language support and advice.

But some English heritage children, particularly those in contexts where English dominates the home environment significantly like with two English-speaking parents, can struggle with the community language. They may lag behind peers in the majority language at school and struggle to interact and learn because of the gap in language skills. This is the reverse of what we see in every other heritage language scenario, and it requires a completely different approach.

This happens because the same factors that protect and strengthen English: high home exposure, limited interaction in the majority language before school, strong English identity within the family can, when taken to an extreme, reduce the child’s cumulative exposure to the language they’ll be immersed in for the next decade of their education.

This does not necessarily mean you should speak less English at home. It means the balance matters and that monitoring both languages, not just English, is essential for this group. It also means that the families most committed to maintaining English can sometimes be the ones who most need support, because the stakes on both sides are real.

No generic bilingual parenting resource will flag this for you. It’s not on their radar, because for the vast majority of heritage families, it’s not a risk. For English heritage families, it is and it’s one of the most important reasons why this group needs tailored guidance.

What This Means for Your Family

If you’re raising bilingual children in English abroad, here are the practical implications of everything above:

Home input still matters a lot!!

Even with school English supplementing your child’s exposure, home input is not interchangeable with classroom input. The quality, naturalness, and emotional richness of home language interaction drives development in ways that instructed language learning doesn’t replicate. Don’t assume school English is doing the heavy lifting even though it might act as a nice surprise and help for your kids.

Prestige won’t do the work for you

The fact that English is globally valued doesn’t mean your child’s English will develop without effort. Motivation and social attitude toward a language influence maintenance, but they don’t replace input. It’s also important to remember that kids don’t really care about the benefits of a language for their future, they care about what’s important to their social life now.

Watch both languages

Because English heritage children are the only group at risk of community language difficulties, a balanced assessment of both languages is essential. If your child is showing signs of difficulty in the majority language via hesitancy, smaller vocabulary than peers, avoidance that’s worth paying attention to early, and not waiting to see if it resolves at school.

General bilingual parenting advice may not apply

Much of what you’ll find online about raising bilingual children is written with the typical heritage language scenario in mind: very clear minority language at home, strong majority language at school, fight to protect the home language. If that framework doesn’t describe your situation or partially fits be cautious about applying generic strategies wholesale.

The bottom line

English heritage families are navigating something genuinely novel. The research on your specific situation is thin. There are very few researchers working on this, and almost no practitioners who specialize in it. That’s precisely why cookie-cutter advice tends to fall flat, and why individualized support makes such a meaningful difference.

Your family’s situation is specific. The support should be too.

I work directly with English heritage families navigating exactly these dynamics on a regular basis. Finding and checking the balance between languages, the quality of home input, what to watch for and when to act. If you want clarity on where your child is and what your family actually needs, let’s talk
👉

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2. Armon-Lotem, S., Rose, K., & Altman, C. (2021). The development of English as a heritage language: The role of chronological age and age of onset of bilingualism.First Language, 41(1), 67–89.
3. Countries in Which English Language Is a Mandatory or an Optional Subject (Interactive). University of Winnipeg. Retrieved from uwinnipeg.ca
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