Abstract : One of the apparently paradoxical phenomena in the maintenance of the Garifuna language in Corozal as well as in other Garifuna communities in Honduras is the fact that while Garifuna parents tend to teach their children Spanish as their first language, most Garifuna youth end up learning their ancestral heritage language after completing secondary school. This phenomenon seems to go against predictions made by sociolinguists that without vertical transmission from parent to child, heritage languages cannot be maintained.