50 YEARS OF LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE AND LANGUAGE DOMINANCE IN BILINGUAL HISPANIC IMMIGRANTS

Spanish language tests of 801 Cuban and Mexican immigrants showed no e vidence of language loss during 50 years of U.S. residence; a few year s after immigration, their English vocabulary approximated that of Eng lish monolinguals. The critical-age hypothesis was not supported for t he acquisition of English vocabulary when English schooling and langua ge usage were controlled by multiple regression. Most Ss continued to speak about as much Spanish as English; but read, wrote, and heard (on television and radio) far more English than Spanish. Under these cond itions, Ss maintained Spanish dominance on tests of vocabulary recogni tion, lexical decision, and oral comprehension. Dominance was task spe cific and shifted to English on a category generation task about 12 ye ars after immigration. No evidence of bilingual language interference was found; this is attributed to the strong Spanish foundation of the participants.