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Mother tongue   /mˈəðər təŋ/   Listen
Mother tongue

noun
1.
One's native language; the language learned by children and passed from one generation to the next.  Synonyms: first language, maternal language.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Mother tongue" Quotes from Famous Books



... for most of my life—it is Lancelot Carnegan. I hail from Ireland, as you may suppose; and perhaps you may have already discovered a touch of the brogue—but it has been well-nigh washed out of me; still, though we children of Erin roam the world over, we never entirely get rid of our mother tongue." ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston

... sick, take especial care that they repeat to you the apostles' creed in their mother tongue. Interrogate them on every article, and ask them if they believe sincerely. After this, make them say the confiteor, and the other Catholic prayers, and then read the gospel ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... school French and of one's opportunities to learn upon Continental trips. It took me three years of hard work to recover from the sort of French which I learned at school, and I am not well yet. The French spoken by Trehayne was the French of the nursery. It was almost, if not quite, his mother tongue, just as his English was. Trehayne's French accent did not fit into Trehayne's history as retailed to us by Dawson. From that moment I plumped for Trehayne as the cutter ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... Agnes, who spoke the Mohican language as fluently as their mother tongue, would then explain to the Indians the contents of the chapter read, in their native language, and sometimes Agnes would sing one of the fine songs which she had cleverly translated into ...
— Three Young Pioneers - A Story of the Early Settlement of Our Country • John Theodore Mueller

... N. language; phraseology &c 569; speech &c 582; tongue, lingo, vernacular; mother tongue, vulgar tongue, native tongue; household words; King's English, Queen's English; dialect &c 563. confusion of tongues, Babel, pasigraphie^; pantomime &c (signs) 550; onomatopoeia; betacism^, mimmation, myatism^, nunnation^; pasigraphy^. lexicology, philology, glossology^, glottology^; linguistics, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget


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