The First Native Scale
Twelve questions about what you already see every day: which language your child answers in, whether feelings can be put into words, whether the words arrive by themselves. Works for any heritage language.
About 2 minutes · no registration · answers are stored anonymously
Short picture-naming and speech tasks for the child exist in the Russian and Ukrainian versions of the test — they are tied to a specific language and cannot be generalised.
This is a screening and orientation tool, not a diagnosis. The stage thresholds are expert-set and are being calibrated against ongoing anonymized results — see how the scale is measured.
MyFirstNative — personalized guidance for families raising children away from their first language — is in development. Leave your email for early access.
Prefer email? Write to research@firstnative.org.
It does not diagnose, and it does not replace a speech and language professional. It does not assess your child's general development, and it is not suitable for children under three. Answers are stored anonymously — only the option numbers, no names and no contact details. Your email, if you leave one, is recorded separately and only for the MyFirstNative waitlist.
The scale rests on parental observation, the most extensively validated source of evidence about a child's heritage language. How it was built, on what data, and where its limits lie is published openly: Methodology · Data & Research
First Native