He was not speaking metaphorically; heritage buildings, he said, sometimes disappeared over weekends — knocked down when few people would notice.
In immigrant communities, such as Vietnamese in the USA, children who continue speaking their heritage language at home, while becoming bilingual at school, show improved academic performance.
Amid all the debates around immigration, inclusion, English-speaking, heritage, Englishness v Britishness and identity: the seemingly trivial trait of cynicism seems to get lost, but might matter more than it seems.
His L.B.C. publicity brochures often speak of "heritage".
The immigrants' kids always learn English, and speak the heritage language at home.
The Asian-language speakers had been educated earlier in their Asian tongues, but in Scotland spoke their heritage language only at home, and used English more outside home and family circles.
Once the majority of young people in a community no longer speak their heritage language, it declines rapidly.
Now, that's my Puritan heritage speaking.
Karl Williams, the 39-year-old Yale-educated owner of 67 Orange Street, quotes Marcus Garvey when speaking about the heritage defining his establishment, talking about using "arts and literature to demonstrate black competence through prominence, skill and intellect".
"This environment is a complete reversal of what occurs too often in schools, where a child is ridiculed or reprimanded for speaking one's heritage language," said Inée Y. Slaughter, executive director of the Indigenous Language Institute, a group in Santa Fe, N.M., that works with tribes on native languages.
