This study is an investigation on the Somali language shift towards English. Four Somali-US born children were selected for the research question one in order to explore the Somali language features that are susceptible to the attrition when they come in contact with English. Their parents were selected as samples for the research question two in the purpose of scrutinising their perceptions on the maintenance of their L1 by their children. The results show that children present 1) lexical and morphological difficulties in retrieving L1 words and 2) difficulties in L1 sentence structure caused by the excessive use of English in everyday life. Moreover, the results illustrate that parents believe L1 could be maintained by providing L1 classes in order to teach the formal structure of L1 to the children. They addedbringing back children to their home country during holidays would help to sustain their mother tongue too.
