first language
12
2.2
- noun
- /fɜrst ˈlæŋɡwɪdʒ/
:
lengua materna
- English is my first language.
- first language is English
- first language was Spanish
- Pidgin as a first language
My daughter's first language is Hebrew, second is English.
- My daughter's first language is Hebrew, second is English.
- Italian's not your first language, but unlike you.
- I would say yeah, because my first language that I learnt was Russian.
- And yeah, so Spanish was my first language.
- It's not about whether you speak English as a first language.
- Most of my clients, like you just said, their parents, English isn't their first language.
- The only thing I could think of is maybe because you can tell English is not our first language.
- That's why they speak Punjabi as their first language rather than Urdu or English would be their third language then.
- Obviously English is not my first language so I did want to continue reading from her just to improve and this probably wasn't the best way of doing it.
- He speaks Spanish because he was taught that as his first language, But it's just words for him.
Examples
-
Spanish is my first language, Italian is my second and English is my third.
-
My daughter's first language is Hebrew, second is English.
-
Research has been conducted on the effects of online technology in first language reading and writing.
Academic text (2015) -
All children had 20/20 vision and spoke English as their first language.
Academic text (2013) -
Seven of the students were English learners whose first language was Spanish.
Academic text (2013) -
English was in effect Nabokov's first language: he learned to read it before he could read Russian.
Academic text (2004) -
In the past, Grace felt sure that school problems were because Matthew's first language was Chinese.
Academic text (1995) -
Some educators have children in their classrooms whose first language is not English.
Academic text (1999) -
Of these, parental/guardian reports indicated that 74 spoke English as their first language.
Academic text (2012) -
English is my first language and I grew up speaking it at home.
Synonyms
14
2.0
The first language a person learns as a child
5
2.7
The first language a person learns at home
The language a person learns at home from birth
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'the language learned from birth' is directly and compositionally derived from 'first' (earliest) + 'language' (a system of communication), so its sense is immediately predictable. This is a common, cross-linguistic construction (e.g. Spanish 'primera lengua') and would be understood by a B1 learner who knows both constituent words.
Etymology
First language comes from the simple idea of the language you learn first in life. Babies hear one language at home and learn it before any other, so first shows which comes earliest and language is the words they learn, which is why it means 'native language' or the language you learn from birth.