Is first language same as mother tongue?

Is first language same as mother tongue?

There is no significant difference between mother tongue and first language since both refer to a person’s native language. Mother tongue or first language is the language a person has been exposed to from the birth. It is usually the language one first learns. It is also the language a person is most fluent in.

What is considered your first language?

A first language is the language a person has learned from birth or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity. By contrast, a second language is any language that one speaks other than one’s first language.

What is the difference between a native language and mother tongue?

Native language refers to the language of the area the person grows up in. For example, growing up in the United States, your native language would be English. It’s the language used every day everywhere you go by the vast majority of the people there. Mother tongue refers to the language of the family you grew up in.

Why first language is called mother tongue?

According to Ivan Illich, the term “mother tongue” was first used by Catholic monks to designate a particular language they used, instead of Latin, when they were “speaking from the pulpit”. That is, the “holy mother the Church” introduced this term and colonies inherited it from Christianity as a part of colonialism.

Can you lose your first language?

It’s possible to forget your first language, even as an adult. Most long-term migrants know what it’s like to be a slightly rusty native speaker. The process seems obvious: the longer you are away, the more your language suffers.

Can you have two mother tongues?

The person has two mother tongues only if the two languages were used equally often and are still understood by the person. For a child who has not yet learned to speak, the mother tongue is the language spoken most often to this child at home.

Is it OK to say native language?

It’s ok to start speaking English with the locals from day one. Locals just means the people that live there, they could originally be from anywhere. Natives means two things – person born in a particular place or country and someone having mother tongue of some language (precisely, the native speakers).

Is there a mother language?

What is a mother language? Your ‘mother language’, or ‘mother tongue’, is the language you spoke from earliest childhood. For most people, this is just one language but children in multilingual families may learn two simultaneously.

What is mother tongue in your own words?

Mother tongue is defined as the first language that a person learns and the language used in that person’s home country. An example of mother tongue is English for someone born in America. The language one first learned; the language one grew up with; one’s native language.

Can one forget their mother tongue?

Forgetting your native tongue is not something many people think can happen, yet it is a real possibility. While some people can remember their native language after years, even decades of not speaking or hearing it, many others begin to lose fluency after only 3-5 years.

Can you have 3 mother tongues?

As noted in the Wikipedia article, it is possible, should a child have bilingual parents, for that child to grow up speaking more than one language, and, thus have multiple “mother tongues”.

What’s the difference between native language and mother tongue?

The language which a person has grown up speaking from early childhood. The language one first learned; the language one grew up with; one’s native language. The language spoken by one’s ancestors. The first language one is taught to speak; one’s native language.

Can a person have more than one mother tongue?

Sometimes we have multiple mother tongues. Sometimes we think of our mother tongue as the language “spoken at home to our parents” or or the language “our parents taught us”. For some of us this is true, others not so. As author Rita Rosenback says, in this diverse world we can be “mother-tongue-less” and don’t speak our mother tongue.

What’s the difference between mother tongue and vernacular?

Some vernaculars are mother tongues and first languages. Join ResearchGate to ask questions, get input, and advance your work. First language and mother tongue have basically the same meaning, whereas the vernacular is the language spoken by the people.

What do you mean when you say mother tongue?

When we speak about mother tongue, we tend to think of a common language spoken by a cultural group or our ancestors. “Mother” in this phrase generally pays homage to “motherland”, the place (s) where our descendents lived and originated.