First language

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A first language (also native language, arterial language, L1, or mother tongue) is the language a person has learned from birth¹ or speaks the best, and is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity.²

By contrast, a second language is any language that one speaks other than one's first language.

Contents 1 Terminology 1.1 Mother tongue 2 Significance 3 On multilinguality 3.1 Defining mother tongue 4 See also 5 References

Terminology

Sometimes the term native language is used to indicate a language that a person is as proficient in as a natural-born inhabitant of that language's "base country," or as proficient as the average person who speaks no other language but that language.^{citation needed}

Sometimes the term mother tongue or mother language is used for the language that a person learnt at home (usually from their parents). Children growing up in bilingual homes can, according to this definition, have more than one mother tongue.

In the context of population censuses conducted on the Canadian population, Statistics Canada defines mother tongue as "the first language learned at home in childhood and still understood by the individual at the time of the census."³ It is quite possible that the first language learned is no longer a speaker's dominant language. Young immigrant children, whose families have moved to a new linguistic environment may lose, in part or in totality, the language they first acquired (see language attrition).

Mother tongue

The term "mother tongue" should not be interpreted to mean that it is the language of one's mother. In some paternal societies, the wife moves in with the husband and thus may have a different first language than the husband. Mother in this context probably originated from the use of "mother" as origin; as in mother-country or mother-land.

In some countries such as Kenya and India, "mother tongue" is used to indicate the language of one's ethnic group (ethnic tongue), in both common and journalistic parlance (e.g. 'I have no apologies for not learning my mother tongue', rather than one's first language. Also in Singapore, "mother tongue" refers to the language of one's ethnic group regardless of actual proficiency, while the "first language" refers to the English language that was established on the island through British colonisation, which is the lingua franca for most post-independence Singaporeans due to its use as the language of instruction in government schools and as a working language.

J. R. R. Tolkien in his 1955 lecture "English and Welsh" distinguishes the "native tongue" from the "cradle tongue," the latter being the language one happens to learn during early childhood, while one's true "native tongue" may be different, possibly determined by an inherited linguistic taste, and may later in life be discovered by a strong emotional affinity to a specific dialect (Tolkien personally confessed to such an affinity to the Middle English of the West Midlands in particular).

21 February has been proclaimed the International Mother Language Day by UNESCO on 17 November 1999.

Significance

The first language of a child is part of their personal, social and cultural identity.⁴ Another impact of the first language is that it brings about the reflection and learning of successful social patterns of acting and speaking. It is basically responsible for differentiating the linguistic competence of acting.

On multilinguality

One can have two or more native languages, thus being a native bilingual or indeed multilingual. The order in which these languages are learned is not necessarily the order of proficiency. For instance, a French-speaking couple might have a daughter who learned French first, then English; but if she were to grow up in an English-speaking country, she would likely be proficient in English. Another example is India, where most people speak more than one language.

The Brazilian linguist Cleo Altenhofen considers the denomination "mother tongue" in its general usage to be imprecise and subject to various interpretations that are biased linguistically, especially with respect to bilingual children from ethnic minority groups. He cites his own experience as a bilingual speaker of Portuguese and Riograndenser Hunsrückisch, a German-rooted language brought to southern Brazil by the first German immigrants. In his case, like that of many children whose home language differs from the language of the environment (the 'official' language), it is debatable which language is one's 'mother tongue'. Many scholars have given definitions of 'mother tongue' through the years based on common usage, the emotional relation of the speaker towards the language, and even its dominance in relation to the environment. However, all of these criteria lack precision.

Defining mother tongue

• Based on origin: the language(s) one learned first (the language(s) in which one has established the first long-lasting verbal contacts).
• Based on internal identification: the language(s) one identifies with/as a speaker of;
• Based on external identification: the language(s) one is identified with/as a speaker of, by others.
• Based on competence: the language(s) one knows best.
• Based on function: the language(s) one uses most.

See also

• Child Of Deaf Adult
• Human speechome project at MIT
• Third Culture Kids
• List of languages by number of native speakers

References