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Glite Dictionary
mother tongue

mother tongue

5 2.7
The first language a person learns at home
  • noun
  • /ˈmʌðər tʌŋ/
translation icon : lengua materna
  • I can't express the joy I felt conversing in my mother tongue.
  • mother tongue or first language
  • acquire their mother tongue
  • speak her mother tongue

So my mother tongue is French, Both of my parents were French.

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Examples

  • For the majority of students, this language will be the mother tongue, not English.

    Academic text (1997)

  • The Belgian student officers received a French or a Dutch version, depending on their mother tongue.

    Academic text (1997)

  • So my mother tongue is French, Both of my parents were French.

    Justine Leconte officiel

  • And I, you know, what about the rights of that young person to read and speak, you know, the mother tongue of their home country?

  • How can she claim to be English and not know her mother tongue?

    Fiction book (1991)

  • Every child has the right to profit from education, regardless of what her mother tongue is.

    Academic text (2001)

  • Young British Asians often cannot read in their mother tongue, although they can speak it fluently.

    Academic text (2002)

  • The issue of curriculum localization initiated the introduction of mother-tongue education.

    Academic text (2003)

  • OK, so growing up in Mauritius, our mother tongue is Creole, which is a dialect of French.

    Dr Sheen Gurrib

  • My mother tongue is Spanish, which I learned from my parents during my childhood.

Synonyms

native language
vsmother tongue
14 2.0

The first language a person learns as a child

is the same concept meaning learned from early childhood
first language
vsmother tongue
12 2.2

The language a person learns from birth and speaks at home

shares same meaning of early learned language without extra nuance
maternal language
vsmother tongue
3.5

The language a person learns at home from birth

means the same early learned language but lacks parental emphasis

Antonyms

second language
16 3.0

Another language a person learns after their native language

Surface Forms

mother tongue singular
mother tongues plural

Morphology

mother + tongue

The meaning is directly derivable from combining 'mother' (the primary caregiver/source) with 'tongue' (language): together they naturally indicate the language learned from one’s mother/early childhood. This compositional pattern is common cross-linguistically (e.g. 'lengua materna', 'langue maternelle'), so a B1 learner who knows the constituents will readily infer the meaning.

Etymology

The phrase mother tongue may come from the image of a baby learning to talk from its mother; the parts mother and tongue point to the person and the speech the child first learns. So it means 'the language you learn first'.