Abstract：After an emigrant group moves to another country, how can they overcome the language barriers and realize cross-lingual communication in the heterogeneous political, economic, social, cultural, and linguistic environment of the host country? What are the linguistic changes and consequences of long-term contact between the emigrant language and the dominant language of the host country? In order to answer these questions, this article attempts to propose the concept of emigrant language adaptation. Based on the language vitality of emigrant groups, five selection strategies or types of language adaptation are distinguished, which are: (1) adaption to the external dominant language and inheritance of the internal emigrant mother tongue (inheritance); (2) assimilation into the external dominant language and abandonment of the internal emigrant mother tongue (assimilation); (3) isolation from the external dominant language and living in the emigrant language community (segregation); (4) integration into the external dominant language and culture, with weakening emigrant language and culture (integration); (5) floating on the edge of external dominant languages and internal emigrant languages (marginalization). This article, in terms of emigrant language adaptation, describes the characteristics of dual dimension, diachrony, diversity, protracted nature, adaptability, bidirectionality, and polyhedrality, and demonstrates the research paradigm. The study of language adaptation of emigrants can also provide some reference and enlightenment for the research in general linguistics, contact linguistics, sociolinguistics, ethnic linguistics, overseas Chinese inheritance, and other disciplines and related fields.
