"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
... were not allowed to cross the border and so escape this, in many a case, hateful obligation. Their life was forfeit, if they sought to evade the dread duties of the fighting line, and refused to level reluctant rifles against men speaking the same mother tongue. Some few, however, secured the rare privilege of acting simply as despatch riders, or as members of the ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... both, of the ball of the Khedive," he continued in his English, which was, though amazingly fluent and ready, a literal sounding translation of the French, which was in reality his mother tongue. "My sister thinks she can arrange that invitation. You are sure that you will be returned at ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... the government, a party was sent in quest of him. After some trouble he was discovered, and brought into the settlement; but the results of his past life with the blacks were, that he had entirely forgotten his mother tongue, and had acquired new ways and sympathies that long deterred him from assimilating to those of the whites. Considering his many and peculiar vicissitudes, a remission of the penalty to which he was liable was obtained from the Crown; and a perpetual ticket-of-leave ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... telling on himself, from making any world for his thought in the minds of others—like a poet among people of a strange speech, who may have a poetry of their own, but have no ear for his cadence, no answering thrill to his discovery of the latent virtues in his mother tongue. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... his own may travel well-nigh all over the world and everywhere meet some one who can speak his tongue. But what of the Welsh-speaking Welshman? What of the Basque and the Lithuanian who can speak only his mother tongue? Everywhere such a man is a foreigner and with all the foreigner's disadvantages. In most places he is for all practical purposes deaf ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... my mother tongue,' said the man; 'you're what goes by the name of a learned gentleman. Thank ye, sir. You'll be a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... only have gone down the valley," he said, continuing to speak in French, which was a second mother tongue to him. "She must have gone to Sor Teresa. He has induced her to go by some trick. He would not dare to send ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... rolls up his fist and gets a ball through his body), while, single-handed and naked-fisted in a room full of swords, the giant stood over his master, making strange signs and passes and rolling out in wrathful words of his mother tongue what it needed no interpreter to tell his swarming enemies ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... it; and the reason is clear; for when in the time of the Romans everybody spoke Latin as his mother tongue, that did not hinder some among ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... country, as many Persian words are current in Hindostan. We ought rather to wonder the number of Hindostanie words in the Gypsey language, is so considerable, than to require it should be greater, to furnish sufficient proof of the Hindostanie language being the Gypsies' mother tongue. ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... morbid about her manner; she was amiable and respectful as usual, if a little more garrulous. The French will talk at all times about anything, but our conversation always came to a sudden stop the moment one of us relapsed into the mother tongue. As long as a sort of common maccaronic was kept to we managed to understand one another. After I made up my fire I sat up till long past twelve. I heard no more talking downstairs but I could fancy her still arrayed in those festive yet ghastly things, seated ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... to make my way within the lines. We have French prisoners; let me borrow the uniform of one. I can speak French as easily as though it were my mother tongue, which, in sooth, perhaps it is; for I might as well call myself French as English, although I have always loved the English and cast in my lot with them. No sentry can know the face of every soldier in the fortress. Let me see if ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... are numbered," replied he in perfectly pure English, but with a sonorous ring in the articulation of the words, which betrayed the fact that he was not speaking in his mother tongue. "Senor," he continued, "I am dying; the doctor has candidly told me so, though I needed no such assurance from him. The dreadful pangs which shoot through my tortured frame are such as no man could long endure and live. ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... hour they spoke once more their mother tongue of love and faith with an accuracy which told of lifelong rehearsal within their secret hearts. When the golden bowl was broken, its holy contents, flowing free, ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... 13.—On the corruptions of the English language since the reign of Queen Ann, in our style of writing prose. A few easy rules for the attainment of a manly, unaffected and pure language, in our genuine mother tongue, whether for the purpose ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... etes malade! J'apporterai un verre d'eau!" Pauline exclaimed, forgetting her English and adopting her mother tongue in her alarm at Daisy's white face and the ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... reading in a foreign language is rarely so well established as the habit of interpreting the printed symbols of the mother tongue. Even when I seem to be reading German as easily as English, a few hours spent in reading German is to me much more exhausting than the same amount of time spent with an English book. Attending lectures delivered in German is to me more exhausting than the same lectures ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... taking him to an English firm, he started to address them in his long unused mother tongue, when to his extreme mortification he found he could not speak a word of English. Again and again he tried, the harsh gutturals choking in his throat, until at last, flushed and angry, he was forced ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... was not wholly ignorant myself,—although in my quiet country life I had had little opportunity of putting my knowledge to the test, seldom attempting to do more than "prick in some flowers" of foreign speech upon the fabric of my mother tongue; so it was with great timidity that I essayed at first to thread the ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... vulgar copy of Dr. Cantwell "the hypocrite." He is a most gross abuser of his mother tongue, but believes he has a call to preach. He tells old Lady Lambert that he has made several sermons already, but "always does 'em extrumpery" because he could not write. He finds his "religious vocation" more profitable than selling "grocery, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... facile brain acquired the learning of the day—Latin became as his mother tongue, for it was then taught conversationally, and the chaplain seldom or never spoke to ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... method. Nevertheless, to give him full sway, that everything possible might be said in contravention of the proposition, the old trader lapsed into the Indian speech, that was indeed from long usage like a mother tongue to them both. He stayed here, he said, from choice, it was true, but for the sake of the trade that gave him wealth, and with wealth he could return to the colonies at any time, and go whither he would in all the world. But Otasite was restricted; he had no goods ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... expressed himself similarly. We quote from the recently published Service. "Music is a language, a mother tongue, a more mellifluous and articulate language than words, in comparison with which speech is recent and temporary. There is as much music in the world as virtue. In a world of peace and love music ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... shifted back and back as I advanced, with a most laughable cast of countenance, between jest and earnest, while Fyall kept shouting to him—"If it be his ghost, try him in Latin, Mr Bang—speak Latin to him, Aaron Bang—nothing for a ghost like Latin, it is their mother tongue." ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... with his customs; for we know by repeated experience that great talents and learning are not necessary in a governor, as there are a hundred at least who govern like gerfalcons, though they can hardly read their mother tongue. Provided their intention is righteous and their desire to do justice, they will never want counsellors to direct them in every transaction, like your military governors, who being illiterate themselves, never decide without the advice of an assessor. I shall advise him corruption ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... difficulties was, that he never knew what was said to him, and that he pursued his inquiries among people who never knew what he said to them. Still, with an unshaken confidence that the English tongue was somehow the mother tongue of the whole world, only the people were too stupid to know it, Mr Meagles harangued innkeepers in the most voluble manner, entered into loud explanations of the most complicated sort, and utterly renounced replies in ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... to spend sixteen years of his life on a foreign service, with a family growing up, who enjoy very rare opportunities of conversing with any of their own countrymen, and still less of their countrywomen, in their mother tongue. I take some liberty in venturing to offer these wholly unauthorized remarks on a subject of some delicacy; and only wish I could flatter myself they have any chance of reaching influential quarters, and not being forgotten. Mr. Craig's position, respected and esteemed as ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... in his arms. The man spoke no German, and Ulrich knew but his mother tongue; but when the man, turning towards the neighbouring village with a look of terror in his half-glazed eyes, pleaded with his hands, Ulrich understood, and lifting him gently carried him further ...
— The Love of Ulrich Nebendahl • Jerome K. Jerome
... person in the Holy City who in his heart was not devoutly thankful for our victory. He told me that on the day we captured Nebi Samwil three wounded Arab officers were brought to the hospital. One of them spoke English—it was astonishing how many people could speak our mother tongue—and while he was having his wounds dressed he exclaimed: 'I can shout Hip-hip-hurrah for England now.' The officer was advised to be careful, as there were many Turkish wounded in the hospital, but he replied he did not ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... born in Wilster (Holstein); a forerunner of Comenius; his theory of education, which in his hands proved a failure, was based on Baconian principles; proceeded from things to names, and from the mother tongue to ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... well disposed to the proposition, and some of them warmly: however, there was no difference of opinion in the conclusion, that it could not be effected. The reasons which they thought would with certainty prevail against it, were, 1. that our youth, not familiarized but with their mother tongue, were not prepared to receive instructions in any other; 2. that the expense of the institution would excite uneasiness in their constituents, and endanger its permanence; and 3. that its extent was disproportioned to ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... there is no chasm, filled with wreckage, between us and the fathers of the church. Above all we have enshrined our beliefs in a marvellous liturgy, which is ever old and ever new, and which had the good fortune to be put into English at a day when the force of expression in our Mother tongue was peculiarly virile, yet peculiarly lovely. I know of nothing in the whole range of English literature that will compare with the collects as contained in our Book of Common Prayer, for beauty, for form, for condensation and for force. They are a ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... in black and gold, printed with red line borders, wittily written, valuable to all who would speak their mother tongue with accuracy. ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... subsequently executed. The Queen and Prime Minister were banished. Speaking English, the chief foreign language spoken, has been tabooed. Natives who are heard using it, or suspected of employing our mother tongue, are thrust into prison and kept there, pour encourager les autres, until they promise to discontinue speaking it. Association of natives with English or Americans renders them marked persons. The Protestant missions are regarded as centres of treason and enmity to French authority. Quickly, as ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... In our own mother tongue we have something similar. The dialect of Canaan, the importations of Judaism, the irruptions of Hebraic idioms, phrases and names into Puritanism, and the ejaculations of the camp-meeting, which vein and color our English speech, may give ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... in torrid zone and regions of perpetual ice to free the seas of the traitorous monster who had, in the twentieth century, hoisted the black flag of piracy and murder. For three years this ceaseless war was waged, and then, with her wonderful patience exhausted, the great sister nation of the mother tongue joined her fleets and armies with those of the battle-worn Allies and peace ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... and better writers kept the mean between them. More lasting effect was produced by translators, who in later times have corrupted our idiom as much as, in early ones, they enriched our vocabulary; and to this injury the Scotch have greatly contributed; for composing in a language which is not their mother tongue, they necessarily acquired an artificial and formal style, which, not so much through the merit of a few as owing to the perseverance of others, who for half a century seated themselves on the bench of criticism, has almost superseded the vernacular ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... been ready for a long time. Isabel was two years older than Susan, a beautiful, grave-eyed brunette, gracious in manner, sweet of voice, the finest type that her class and environment can produce. Isabel was well read, musical, traveled; she spoke two or three languages besides her mother tongue. She had been adored all her life by three younger brothers, by her charming and simple, half-invalid mother, and her big, clever father, and now, all the girls were beginning to suspect, was also adored ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... Paris, anglicized to his very galoshes. Gautier says that when they met, Vabre gave him a 'shake hand' almost energetic enough to pull the arm from the shoulder. He spoke with so strong an English accent that it was difficult to understand him; Vabre had almost forgotten his mother tongue. Gautier congratulated the exile upon his return, and said, 'My dear Jules Vabre, in order to translate Shakespeare it is now only necessary for ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... virtuous. Thomas Fuller called volume vollum, I suspect, for he spells it volumne. However, per contra, Yankees habitually say colume for column. Indeed, to prove that our ancestors brought their pronunciation with them from the Old Country, and have not wantonly debased their mother tongue, I need only to cite the words scriptur, Israll, athists, and cherfulness from Governor Bradford's 'History.' So the good man wrote them, and so the good descendants of his fellow-exiles still pronounce them. Brampton Gurdon writes shet in a letter to Winthrop. Purtend ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... that foreign languages should be learnt as a child learns its mother tongue. It seemed to me a strange use to make of the reason and intelligence of the adult, to cast it aside as useless and to ask the youth and man to become a child again. It appeared to me the most wasteful of methods. Is language a science, and if so, what would ...
— The Aural System • Anonymous
... our position politically? Why, the foreigner who can't speak his mother tongue correctly; the negro, who to our own shame, we regard as fit only for a boot-black (whose dead even we bury by themselves), and the drunkard, all are entrusted with the ballot, all placed by men politically higher ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... would be wanting in all the three above-mentioned conditions, which must concur, in order that in the benefit conferred there may be ready Liberality; and our Mother Tongue possesses all, as it is possible to show thus manifestly. The Latin would not have served many; for if we recall to memory that which is discoursed of above, the learned men, without the Italian tongue, could not have had this service. And those who ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... language with an even graceful utterance, and a faultless accuracy of pronunciation, equally removed from effort and provincialisms. As the Dutch was in very common use then, at Albany, and most females of Dutch origin had a slight touch of their mother tongue in their enunciation of English, this purity of dialect in the two girls was to be ascribed to the fact that their father was an Englishman by birth; their mother an American of purely English origin, though named after a Dutch god- mother; and the ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... Plato; 'Tis the man who with a bird, Wren, or eagle, finds his way to All its instincts; he hath heard The lion's roaring, and can tell What his horny throat expresseth, And to him the tiger's yell Comes articulate and presseth On his ear like mother tongue." * ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... translation, though one or two errors of orthography in her note rather afflict the eye; but I know that it is not unusual for what are considered well-educated French women to fail in the point of writing their mother tongue correctly. But whether competent or not, I presume she has a right to translate the book with or without my consent. She gives her address: Mdlle B—- {373} W. Cumming, Esq., ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... time of Constantius, were "the Assyrians on the verge of the outer ocean towards the East ... whom Alexander the Great, after driving them from Syria, sent thither to settle, and to this day they keep their mother tongue, though all of the blackest, through the power of the sun's rays." The Arab voyagers of the 9th century say that the island was colonised with Greeks by Alexander the Great, in order to promote the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... costume. When he thought of his own country, it was only to wonder why he ever submitted to the constraint of a coat, or put himself to the trouble of handling a fork and spoon. He had not, however, entirely forgotten his mother tongue, and, moreover, still retained in his memory a few English words. He was likewise very communicative, and told Jack that they were in the Island of Hawai; that the name of the king was Toubowrai Tamaidi, who, he added, intended visiting the pinnace with the queen next day, to pay his respects ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... his mother tongue to the crew; then he turned to Frewen: "There is something wrong on shore. 'Lemonte' is my brother-in-law's name, and they are calling for him." Then he ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke
... knowledge of the language of some of the neighbouring tribes, and it proved not unlike that of the Little Cherry Indians. Francois found in the village an Indian who had been brought up among the Spaniards of the Pacific Coast, and who still spoke their language as readily as he spoke his mother tongue. He questioned him eagerly about the distance to the Spanish settlements and the difficulties of the way. The man replied that the journey was long. It was also, he said, very dangerous, because it must be through the country ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee
... illustrate or polish his native language, was a service of real patriotism, he composed a work on the grammar and orthoepy of the Latin language. Cicero and himself were the only Romans of distinction in that age, who applied themselves with true patriotism to the task of purifying and ennobling their mother tongue. Both were aware of the transcendent quality of the Grecian literature; but that splendor did not depress their hopes of raising their own to something of the same level. As respected the natural wealth of the two languages, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... Middle and Eastern Europe would feel insulted if his mother tongue were now so described. If these Jewish scholars have succeeded, within a generation, in giving their masses a language of which they may feel proud, surely it should be an easy task for us to supply the needs of our own vernaculars which are cultured languages. South ...
— Third class in Indian railways • Mahatma Gandhi
... Guide we have endeavoured to avoid as much as possible the rise of French words, and to give our directions in the plain mother tongue. Nevertheless there must always be certain technical terms, such as chassez croisez, glissade, &c., &c., for which it would be difficult to find good English equivalents. We therefore subjoin a Glossary of all such words and expressions as have long since been universally accepted as the accredited ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... impulse given by the appearance there of the New Testament of Erasmus. From that moment one thought was at his heart. He "perceived by experience how that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth except the Scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue." ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... prevails. In the fourth and last case peaceful bands of immigrants enter a country to follow the humbler callings. They are scattered among the natives, and succeed in proportion as they learn the language of their adopted country. For their children and grandchildren this language becomes their mother tongue, and the speech of the ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... prosody, and mythology were first developed into sciences. The study of archaeology was begun, and the first dictionaries were made. The translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek was begun for the benefit of the Alexandrian Jews who had forgotten their Mother tongue, this being the origin of the famous Septuagint [13] version of the Old Testament. It is owing to these Alexandrian scholars, also, that we now possess the theory of Greek accents, and have good texts of ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... period above alluded to, authors professed to write as other men spoke; every body now affects to speak as authors write; and any one who retains the use of his mother tongue, either in writing or conversation, is looked upon ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... in and sang, such a song I warrant as my lords and ladies had never bent their ears to hear before, a crooning death incantation of the Choctaws, which fell as naturally from my lips as my own mother tongue. ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... I addressed thee fair and subtile words on yester even, O sweet and incomparable knight! there did enter into my presence a base enchanter who did evilly enchant and bewitch me, making me to do dire offence unto the mother tongue. Soothly this base born enchanter did cause me to write "arms," when soothly I did mean an "alms," and sore grievousness be come upon me lest haply thou dost not understand this matter ere this missive reach thee. I do beseech thee have a care to tell the fair princesses and glorious ladies ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... from certain parts of the vast hinterland speak Mandarin almost as a mother tongue, while those from the seaboard and certain adjacent parts of the interior have nearly as much difficulty in acquiring it, and quite as much difficulty in speaking it with a correct ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... was certainly true in Gibbon's case. On his arrival at Lausanne he hardly knew any French, but before he returned to England he thought spontaneously in French and understood, spoke, and wrote it better than he did his mother tongue.[85] He read Montesquieu frequently and was struck with his "energy of style and boldness of hypothesis." Among the books which "may have remotely contributed to form the historian of the Roman ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... that Jesus was what we should call an ignorant man. Refinement of manners and acuteness of intellect have, in the East, nothing in common with what we call education. In all probability Jesus did not know Greek. His mother tongue was the Syrian dialect, mingled with Hebrew. No element of secular teaching reached him. He was ignorant of all beyond Judaism; his mind kept that free innocence which an extended and varied culture always weakens. Happily, he was also ignorant of the grotesque scholasticism which was ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... now that the sharpness of excitement had gone out of it, was a very pleasant voice. The broken words he used assured Nan that his mother tongue must be French. He was probably one of the "Canucks" she had heard her cousins speak of. French Canadians were not at all strange to Nan Sherwood, for in Tillbury many of the mill hands ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... Bedinger heard a Hessian captain, having been repulsed, speak to his riflemen in his own language, telling them to follow his example and reserve their fire until they were close. Bedinger, recognizing his mother tongue, watched the approach of the Hessian officer, and each levelled his unerring rifle at the other. Both fired, Bedinger was wounded in the finger: the ball passing, cut off a lock of his hair. The Hessian was shot through the head, and instantly ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... had believed it; that there lay the cause of the unhappiness of the people and of the best of kings. A third addressed a few words to her in German: the Queen told her she did not understand it; that she had become so entirely French as even to have forgotten her mother tongue. This declaration was answered with "Bravo!" and clapping of hands; they then desired her to make a compact with them. "Ah," said she, "how can I make a compact with you, since you have no faith in that which my duty points out to me, and which I ought for ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... your excuses for us, Giusippe, it is quite true that we Americans are as a rule pitiably ignorant about languages. Here is this boy, Jean, who knows not only his mother tongue but French, German and English besides. Isn't that a rebuke to us, with our fine schools and our college educations? It makes me ashamed of myself. Do you, little girl, try and do better than I have. Well, young man, what do you say to my ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... over with them the English of James I. and the Authorized Version, and their descendants of a century later, inheriting it, allowed the fundamentals to be but little changed by the academic overhauling that the mother tongue was put to during the early part ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... Madame Butterfly, of Pagliacci. He loves music and the theatre. Asch reads in many languages, German, French, Russian, Polish, Hebrew, and a little English. But to everybody he talks in Yiddish. He has no ear for other languages except English, which he says is like his mother tongue! ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... must strike their ears more or less disagreeably. Desiring to respond as well as lay in my power to the invitation with which I have been honored to discuss the hygienic questions relating to malaria, I have chosen the French language as being the one in which, apart from my mother tongue, I could express myself with the greatest ease ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... and England, so near in miles, are still so far away in instinctive comprehension of each other's mode of poetical utterance! No two nations have minds of quite the same "fringe." No man, however complete a linguist, has more than one real mother tongue, and it is only in one's mother tongue that a lyric sings with all its over-tones. And nevertheless, life offers few purer pleasures than may be found in listening to the half-comprehended songs ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... a blanket, with his bow and quiver, emerging from the bushes very near "Minnehaha," and thus my brother accosted him: "How! Nitchie." After a friendly reply to this invariable salutation, Malcolm told him in the Indian language, which was then as familiar to us as our mother tongue, why we were there and what we wanted, offering him a loaf of bread and piece of pork if he would find our wolf and bring him to our door immediately. The lad gladly closed with the offer, took the trail and started ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... participle (already deceased) of the latter orthography. And then, it is not always quite certain whether its events occurred or transpired! The misapplication of this last word is a shocking abuse of our defenceless mother tongue, and one I have not often seen publicly rebuked. It is not long since I saw the poor dissyllable in question evidently misapplied in the dedication of a book, and on Sunday, not long ago, I heard the pastor of one of the first churches in the city preach of the power directing the events which transpire ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... grain. By this time another suggestion arises, how to separate the wheat as the machine journeys in its cutting process. To his convictions nothing will solve this problem but mental action. He thinks and dreams of cause and effect. His mind seems to forget all the words of his mother tongue but cause and effect. He talks and preaches cause and effect in so many places that his associates begin to think he is mentally failing, and will soon be a subject for the asylum. He becomes disgusted with their lack of appreciation, seeks seclusion ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... of New England looked upon the grassy meadows beside the Connecticut, and found them all bubbling with fountains, and called his settlement "Springfield." But the American has lost the elementary uses of his mother tongue. He is perpetually inventing new abstract terms, generalizing with boldness and power and utter contempt of usage. But the rich idiomatic sources of his speech lie too deep for him. They are the glory and the joy of our motherland. You may ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... do. She wrote always freshly, vigorously, but not always clearly; for her full and intimate acquaintance with continental literature, especially German, seemed to have marred her felicity and readiness of expression in her mother tongue. While I never met another woman who conversed more freely or lucidly, the attempt to commit her thoughts to paper seemed to induce a singular embarrassment and hesitation. She could write only when in the vein; and this ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... in the language of Chaucer's day these syllables were still audible; and secondly, that Chaucer consequently employed them in his verse, like any other syllables, with the due metrical value:—herein not, as the Laureate thought, overruling, but conforming himself to the use of his mother tongue. To this more than plausible view, which, if the late studies that have been taken in the intelligence of Alfred's speech had been made in Tyrwhitt's day, would not have waited till now for its full establishment, no objection has yet been raised that seems to deserve the slightest attention. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... is not thus, believe me, Sir, With this enchantress, we will call Our second mother. Frenchmen err, Who cent'ries since proclaimed her fall! Our mother tongue, all melody, While music ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... language of the people, is a barrier which no skill of an interpreter can break down, and every woman who would labor with acceptance and success among the women of Syria, must be able to speak to them familiarly in their own mother tongue. Interpreters may be honest and conscientious, but not one person in a thousand can translate accurately from one language to another without previous preparation. And besides, interpreters are not always reliable. There is still living, in the city of Tripoli, an old man named Abdullah ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... Cdmon, as early as Bede's time, a century before Charlemagne. A manuscript of an Anglo-Saxon epic, called Beowulf, has been preserved which belongs perhaps to the close of the eighth century. The interest which King Alfred displayed in the mother tongue has already been mentioned. This old form of our language prevailed until after the Norman Conquest; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which does not close until 1154, is written in pure Anglo-Saxon. Then changes may be noticed in the language ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... his mother tongue is the birthright of every child. He should first of all be able to speak it correctly and with ease. He should next be able to read it with comprehension and enjoyment, and should become familiar with the best in its literature. He should be ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... ye, daddy, and they were richt weel made," replied the lad, whose mode of speech was entirely different from his grandfather's: the latter had learned English as a foreign language, but could not speak Scotch, his mother tongue being Gaelic. ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... Why will you not tell us what you want, and let us ask for it in the language of the country? It would save us a great deal of the humiliation your reprehensible ignorance causes us. I will address this person in his mother tongue: 'Here, cospetto! corpo di Bacco! Sacramento! Solferino!—Soap, you son of a gun!' Dan, if you would let us talk for you, you would never expose ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... first I thought of Christianity only as something which every one, like the mother tongue, knows intuitively, and therefore not as the object of a peculiar study. But in January 1816, when I for the last time took into consideration all that belonged to my plan, and wrote it down, I arrived at this conclusion, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... vernacular. He thinks and calculates better in French. Frequently when you engage him in conversation in English and the question of business comes up, you find that he instinctively lapses into his mother tongue. ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... sentences rolling magnificently in great waves of melodious sound, trenchant in every syllable, not to be equalled even by Shakespeare himself, Milton stands out like a giant. As for Bunyan, the Englishman who has never read 'Pilgrim's Progress' does not know his mother tongue." ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... and to whom, with loving recognition, he was grateful to the end of his life. His grandmother and this nurse taught him to read and write. In his seventh year he began the study of foreign languages; German, French,—which was as his mother tongue to him,—and mathematics, which he hated. At nine the passion of reading possessed him and he devoured his father's library, which included the French erotics, Voltaire, Rousseau, and the Encyclopedists. ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... the Catholic Spaniard had acquired a knowledge of the Indian language sufficient to enable him to translate the Bible into the Aztec Indian language, so that the new Indian neophyte could read the story of "God's greatest Book" in his mother tongue." ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... certainly a co-creator, improving Nature by the aid of science, just as the human mind and character are improved by means of education. And when the prejudice of the ages has been rolled away the name "farmer" will rank among the most envied names that enrich our mother tongue. Here, indeed, may be verified the saving: "The first shall be last and the last shall ...
— The Stewardship of the Soil - Baccalaureate Address • John Henry Worst
... and National Individuality," has been in large degree the result of a cultural process based upon isolation. The historical nations of Europe, biologically hybrid, are united by common language, folkways, and mores. This unity of mother tongue and culture is the product of historical and cultural processes circumscribed, as Shaler points out, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... we can get no further than that such action as has been taken has never been seen except as following after and in consequence of a desire to obstruct; that this is our nomenclature, and that we can no more be expected to change it than to change our mother tongue at the bidding of ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... song of Beowulf and love it, heathen though it be, better than aught else, and will till one rises up who will turn Holy Writ into their mother tongue, as Caedmon did for Northumbria. Howbeit, doubtless those who were fiends in the days of the false gods are fiends yet, and if Grendel then, so also Grendel now, though he may have many other names. And knowing ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... singular contrast between the character and intellect of the two men. The typical Englishman, with his rough, strong sense, passing at times into the narrowest insular prejudice, detested the Frenchified fine gentleman who minced his mother tongue and piqued himself on cosmopolitan indifference to patriotic sentiment: the ambitious historian was irritated by the contempt which the dilettante dabbler in literature affected for their common ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... grace their sentiments added to English poetry; how much their images raised its spirit, and what weight and beauty their words, when translated, gave to its language: nor was he less curious in observing the force and elegance of his mother tongue; but by the example of his darling Milton, searched backwards into the works of our old English poets, to furnish him with proper sounding, and significant expressions, and prove the due extent, and compass of the language. For this purpose ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... engaging: it was hardly possible for a woman to have less wit, or more beauty: all her features were fine and regular; but her shape was not good: yet she was slender, straight enough, and taller than the generality of women: she was very graceful, danced well, and spoke French better than her mother tongue: she was well bred, and possessed, in perfection, that air of dress which is so much admired, and which cannot be attained, unless it be taken when young, in France. While her charms were gaining ground in the king's heart, the Countess of Castlemaine amused herself in the gratification ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... foreign language, among customs and ways of thought which it takes a lifetime to understand: they are using their mother tongue and handling matters that they have known from childhood. He cannot tell a lie and is ashamed to deceive: they are trained in a thrifty policy which saves the truth for a last resort in case everything else should fail. ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... mother tongue of the Bantu people living in Zanzibar and nearby coastal Tanzania; although Kiswahili is Bantu in structure and origin, its vocabulary draws on a variety of sources, including Arabic and English, and it has become the lingua franca of central and eastern ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... extant literary monuments of the Anglo-Saxons possess a singular value as illustrations of the character of the people, and have the additional attraction of being written in what was really our mother tongue. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... livelihood by letting out mules to travelers, and leading them over the difficult passes of the Cordilleras, after which he gave them in charge of a BAQUEANO, or Argentine guide, to whom the route through the Pampas was perfectly familiar. This Englishman had not so far forgotten his mother tongue among mules and Indians that he could not converse with his countrymen, and a lucky thing it was for them, as Lord Glenarvan found it far easier to give orders than to see them executed, Paganel was still unsuccessful ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... nationalities there was a Colombian, a gentleman of Swedish birth, a Chinaman from Martinique, and a Greek, all of whom spoke English, Spanish, and at least one other language. Of the three native Americans two spoke only their mother tongue. In the entire white uniformed force I met only Lieutenant Long and the Corporal in charge of Miraflores who could seriously be said to speak Spanish, though I am informed there were one ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... determine what the status was? I thought it had been considered a march forward, a step of progress, an evidence of improvement in English legislation, when it abandoned Norman French and law Latin, and resorted to the mother tongue; and especially it should be so, when we are making constitutions for American people of English descent, and who speak the English tongue. A constitution is for the millions, and the millions should be able to ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... August to melt them. Nobody would have guessed from Bob's presentation now that he had ever been aloft on a dark night in the Atlantic, or knew the hundred ingenuities that could be performed with a rope's end and a marline-spike as well as his mother tongue. ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... I used to hear Round such a fireside, Speaking the mother tongue old and dear; Making the heart beat, With endless tales of wonder and fear, Or ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... French in the public schools and colleges is another grievous condition of annexation. Alsatians of all ranks are therefore under the necessity of providing private masters for their children, unless they would let them grow up in ignorance of their mother tongue. And here a word of explanation may be necessary. Let no strangers in Alsace take it for granted that because a great part of the rural population speak a patois made up of bad German and equally bad French, they ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... volunteered no information whatever; it had all to be drawn out of him. He spoke in a low voice, and, as it appeared to me, with something of the hesitation of a man who is recalling his mother tongue after many years of disuse. His face was large and heavy; but there was a keen light in his eyes which at times was that of gaiety well kept under. He soon let me see that even a Trappist may give out an occasional flash of humour. I was questioning him respecting the help that the monastery ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... gained to surrounding chemical and physical phenomena. A language course may seek to give pupils a stock of words designed to develop power to read the language in a very short time. Obviously, grammatical work and translations into the mother tongue will now be minimized, and those devices which give the eye the power to find thought in new symbols will be emphasized. There is no standard for determining the relative importance of this informational ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... Latin, which was given me for my mother tongue, I have by discontinuance lost the use of speaking it, and, indeed, of writing it too, wherein I formerly had a particular reputation, by which you may see how inconsiderable I am on ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Convocation was held in England, composed of British and American Episcopal Bishops. They had no difficulty in communicating with one another because all spoke their mother tongue. But suppose they had representatives from Spain, France and Germany. The lips of those Continental Bishops would be sealed because they could not speak to their English brothers; their ears also would be sealed because they could not comprehend ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... questioned Simon. "You'll stay as long as ever you like. It can't be as long as I should like. Stay a while for my sake. Just consider. It's years since I've heard my mother tongue spoken as you speak it, and I'm sore longing to have a chat with a friend who isn't a Crow Indian. Your young partner'd like to stay, if I know anything of boyhood. The adventure would suit him, and to-morrow the Crows are going out on ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... adopted every measure that could tend to annihilate the nationality of the native Indians. Their dances, their music, their dress—all that could revive the remembrance of their progenitors, was condemned to rigorous prohibition; they were even forbidden the use of their mother tongue, the Quichua language. The only beneficial result of these wars, in which upwards of a hundred thousand lives were sacrificed, was the abolition of the Repartimientos, which had been the cause of ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... the selected immigrant settlers of non-English mother tongue, including soldiers, having in mind the need of mixing different races with the native settlers so as to facilitate the process of incorporating all ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... the section next to the age is easy, too," Hamilton continued. "'S' for Single, 'M' for Married, 'Wd' for Widowed, 'D' for Divorced, 'Un' for unknown, any one could guess. But this 'Mother Tongue' business ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... who finally took her education in hand and gave it its fullest development. She had many teachers, of course, and under Hildebrand's guiding genius, the work was not stopped until the young countess could speak French, German, and Latin with the same ease as she did her mother tongue. ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... we ever feel that fire they proceed from. There is a life and a brilliancy in this composition which characterise the country and the inhabitants. The play of Romeo and Juliet translated into Italian would only seem to return to its mother tongue. ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... fewest and simplest words; "powerful and picturesque," writes Hallam, "from concise simplicity." Bunyan's style is recommended by Lord Macaulay as an invaluable study to every person who wishes to gain a wide command over his mother tongue. Its vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. "There is not," he truly says, "in 'The Pilgrim's Progress' a single expression, if we except a few technical terms of theology, that would puzzle the rudest peasant." We may, look through whole pages, and not find a word of more than two syllables. ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... indigenous Malays are next in point of numbers, and their language is the Lingua-franca of the place. Next come the descendants of the Portuguese—a mixed, degraded, and degenerate race, but who still keep up the use of their mother tongue, though ruefully mutilated in grammar; and then there are the English rulers, and the descendants of the Dutch, who all speak English. The Portuguese spoken at Malacca is a useful philological phenomenon. The verbs have mostly lost their inflections, and one form ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... learn his language, to master his mind, and to drink in his spirit. At the same time, and after all that has been said about Behmen's barbarous style, Bishop Martensen tells us how the readers of SCHELLING were surprised and enraptured by a wealth of new expressions and new turns of speech in their mother tongue. But all these belonged to Behmen, or were fashioned on the model of his symbolical language. As it is, with all his astrology, and all his alchemy, and all his barbarities of form and expression, I for one will always take sides with the author of ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... Palma to Ferrara, belongs to the history of all mediaeval warfare; and his sudden and premature death revives the historical tradition though in a new form. The intermediate details of his minstrel's career are of course imaginary; but his struggle to increase the expressiveness of his mother tongue ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... by that," said Goethe, "since it is hard enough to express such uncommon matters in one's own mother tongue." ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... a marked characteristic difference between them. For a period of seven centuries the entrances or passes into the Grampians constituted a boundary between both the people and their language. At the south the Saxon language was universally spoken, while beyond the range the Gaelic formed the mother tongue, accompanied by the plaid, the claymore and other specialties which accompanied Highland characteristics. Their language was one of the oldest and least mongrel types of the great ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... Latin language was at that time more used than at present, the principal nations of Europe wanted to have this work in their mother tongue. Grotius, on examining the Dutch translation, found the translator often wilfully deviating from the true sense of the original. The Great Gustavus caused it to be translated into Swedish: a translation of it into English was preparing in the year 1639: Mr. Barbeyrac ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny |
