mother languages
First learned languages
Mother languages are the first languages learned in childhood, acquired naturally from parents and family rather than through formal instruction.
The phrase emphasizes the intimate, familial transmission of language across generations.
A person's mother language typically remains their most fluent and emotionally resonant tongue: Her mother language was Bengali, though she conducted business in English.
- native speakerOne who grew up speaking it
- revitalizationRestoring vigor or vitality
- bilingualismProficiency in two languages
- identityWho someone is
- cultureCollective social practices
passing it down · dialects · heritage · fluency · vernacular · Welsh · code-switching · old country · oral tradition · creole · pidgin · Gaelic · etymology · communications · lexicon · folklore · phonology · morphology
mother languagesconstructed languages
Artificially devised communication systems
artificial languages · conlangs · Esperanto · Klingon · pidgins
mother, mothers, motherly, motherhood, motherless, mothering, mothered, language, languages