native tongues
First-learned spoken languages
Native tongues are the languages a person learns from birth or early childhood—their first languages, acquired naturally rather than studied.
The phrase emphasizes origin and authenticity: She spoke three languages but reserved her native tongue for family.
Native tongue (singular) refers to one such language; the plural acknowledges that some people grow up with multiple first languages.
- vernacularsRegional everyday languages
- speechOral communication ability
- languagesSystems of human communication
- indigenous languagesSpeech native to a region
- eldersSenior community members
mother's voice · endangered languages · oral traditions · tongue · traditional storytelling · cultural identity · language preservation · passing down · tribal elders · heritage · ancestral languages · old country · oral · code-switching · fluency · homeland · bilingual · immigrant
- linguisticslinguistics, phoneme, phonemes, morpheme, morphemes
- Arctic PeoplesInuit, Inuk, Aleut, Eskimo, Aleuts
- Speech Varietiesvernacular, regional dialect, colloquial, register, jargon
- Honduran LanguagesSpanish
- language rightslanguage rights, minority languages, language laws, official languages, language maintenance
- Maritime languagesEnglish, French, Gaelic, Algonquian
native tonguesforeign languages
Tongues not one's own
second languages · artificial languages · constructed languages · lingua franca · Esperanto
native tonguesconstructed languages
Artificially devised communication systems
artificial languages · conlangs · Esperanto · Klingon · Elvish
native, tongues, natives, nativity, nonnative, nativist, natively, nativism, native-born