# mother tongue

Pronunciation: US say "MUTH-ur tung" /ˈmʌð.ɚ ˌtʌŋ/; UK say "MUTH-uh tung" /ˈmʌð.ə ˌtʌŋ/

## Noun

1. The language a person learns first and grows up speaking, as distinct from any language learned later in life.
   - Simple: The first language you learned as a child, the one you grew up speaking.
   - _His mother tongue is Vietnamese, though he has written all his novels in French._
   - _Many translators prefer to work into their mother tongue, where their ear for idiom is sharpest._
2. The language spoken by one's ancestors, the earlier generations from whom one's family descends.
   - Simple: The language that people in your family spoke long ago.
   - _Third-generation immigrants sometimes take night classes to recover a mother tongue their parents stopped speaking._
   - _Activists argue that the community's mother tongue, silent for two generations, deserves a place in the local schools._
3. The language spoken by one's mother, in a family where the father speaks a different language.
   - Simple: The language your mother speaks, when your father speaks a different one.
   - _In their house the children's mother tongue was Korean and their father tongue Portuguese, and they answered each parent in kind._
   - _The survey asked respondents to name both a mother tongue and a father tongue if their parents spoke different languages._

## Other meanings

- (noun) Informal, everyday speech, contrasted with the more polished language of educated people.

## Origin

From Middle English "mother tonge" or "modyr tong", formed from "mother" and "tongue". It can be compared with the Old Norse "móðurtunga", which has the same meaning.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/mother-tongue (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).