ancestral language
Forebears' mother tongue
An ancestral language is one spoken by earlier generations of a family, community, or ethnic group but no longer used as the primary language by their descendants.
The term often appears in discussions of heritage and identity: She's learning her ancestral language to connect with her grandparents.
Unlike a dead language, an ancestral language may still be spoken elsewhere—it's ancestral relative to particular people, not to humanity.
- first wordsInfant's earliest speech
- heritage speakersHome-acquired language users
- old countryImmigrant's ancestral homeland
- family treeChart of ancestors
- oral traditionCulture passed by speech
spoken word · etymology · Indo-European · folklore · sacred texts · cognates · Dravidian · Austronesian · philology · homeland · Latin · storytelling · lineage · migration · extinct · heritage · bloodline · origin
ancestral languagemodern language
Currently spoken communication system
ancestral languagesecond language
Tongue learned after childhood
foreign language · colonial language · lingua franca · trade language · pidgin