Among linguists, heritage language is an end-state language that is defined based on the temporal order of acquisition and, often, the language dominance in the individual. A heritage speaker acquires the heritage language as their first language through natural input in the home environment and acquires the majority language as a second language, usually when they start school and talk about different topics with people in school, or by exposure through the media (such as written texts, the Internet, or popular culture). As exposure to the heritage language decreases and exposure to the majority language increases, the majority language becomes the individual’s dominant language and acquisition of the heritage language changes. The results of these changes can be seen in divergence of the heritage language from monolingual norms in the areas of phonology, lexical knowledge (knowledge of vocabulary or words), morphology, syntax, semantics and code-switching, although mastery of the heritage language may vary from purely receptive skills in only informal spoken language to native-like fluency.