A heritage language is a language associated with an individual's family, ancestry, cultural identity, or community that differs from the dominant language of the broader social environment. The term encompasses languages acquired or encountered through familial or community contexts, as well as ancestral languages with which individuals maintain a cultural or personal connection, regardless of whether the language is regularly spoken at home or whether the individual has high proficiency in it ^[1]. The concept is context-dependent and does not require a uniform level of linguistic competence; it is distinct from a second language defined solely by the circumstances or sequence of its acquisition because heritage-language status also involves social, cultural, and biographical relationships to a language ^[1][2].