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[1]Language attrition refers to the gradual erosion of a speaker's first language as a result of prolonged, dominant use of a second language. Unlike language death, which describes the disappearance of an entire language from a community, attrition occurs at the level of the individual and can affect vocabulary retrieval, grammatical accuracy, and even phonological patterns. Linguists have grown increasingly interested in attrition because it challenges the long-held assumption that a fully acquired native language is permanently stable in the mind.

[2]Several factors influence the rate and extent of first-language attrition. Age of onset is particularly important: speakers who emigrate before puberty tend to experience more pronounced attrition than those who move as adults, likely because their first-language representations are less deeply consolidated. The amount of daily contact with the first language also matters. Immigrants who maintain regular communication with family members in their heritage language or who participate in community institutions that use it typically show slower erosion than those whose social and professional environments are conducted entirely in the second language.

[3]Research on attrition has practical implications for education and policy. Bilingual programs that encourage continued development of the home language can mitigate attrition, preserving cognitive advantages associated with bilingualism while maintaining cultural and familial connections. Conversely, policies that promote rapid assimilation into a single dominant language may inadvertently accelerate the loss of linguistic diversity within immigrant populations. Some scholars argue that heritage-language maintenance should be viewed not merely as a personal choice but as a matter of cultural preservation with broader societal value.

[4]Importantly, attrition does not appear to be irreversible in all cases. Studies of returnees—individuals who move back to their country of origin after years abroad—suggest that substantial reactivation of dormant first-language knowledge is possible, particularly when speakers are re-immersed in environments where the language is used consistently. This finding implies that attrit language competence may be suppressed rather than permanently deleted, a distinction with significant theoretical consequences for models of how languages are stored and accessed in the bilingual brain.