as in language
the stock of words, pronunciation, and grammar used by a people as their basic means of communication
although the anthropologist could speak the local language fairly well, she was always glad to find someone who shared her mother tongue
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Recent Examples of mother tongue
From the start of his career, Fela aimed to reach a larger and Pan-African audience by singing almost exclusively in Nigerian Pidgin English (rather than his mother tongue, Yoruba, which doesn't translate throughout most of the continent).
—
Ian Brennan,
NPR,
15 Apr. 2026
Playing off a six-language broadcast which means it can be viewed by 75% of Europeans in their mother tongue, Arte is still growing.
—
John Hopewell,
Variety,
26 Mar. 2026
First seen at a night-club table of menacing lowlifes, Ida, whose mother tongue is Brooklynese, suddenly switches to a heavy British accent and dispenses a torrent of highly literary sarcasms.
—
Richard Brody,
New Yorker,
4 Mar. 2026
Work with people of different ages, backgrounds, perspectives, and mother tongues.
—
Rachel Konrad,
Time,
9 Dec. 2025
See All Example Sentences for mother tongue
Ian Brennan,
NPR,
15 Apr. 2026
Playing off a six-language broadcast which means it can be viewed by 75% of Europeans in their mother tongue, Arte is still growing.
—
John Hopewell,
Variety,
26 Mar. 2026
First seen at a night-club table of menacing lowlifes, Ida, whose mother tongue is Brooklynese, suddenly switches to a heavy British accent and dispenses a torrent of highly literary sarcasms.
—
Richard Brody,
New Yorker,
4 Mar. 2026
Work with people of different ages, backgrounds, perspectives, and mother tongues.
—
Rachel Konrad,
Time,
9 Dec. 2025
See All Example Sentences for mother tongue
Recent Examples of Synonyms for mother tongue
Noun
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Eight groups challenged the department’s definition in court, representing nurse practitioners, therapists, speech language pathologists and more.
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Keep language simple, confirm times, and leave extra room between commitments.
Noun
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Operational Infrastructure The market is slowly finding a more honest vocabulary for what AI models actually are.
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Using data collected over years of painstaking observation, Elie discovered 11 core calls that make up the zebra finch vocabulary, such as calls for distress, hunger and saying hello.
Noun
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His wife is from Mexico and their son learned the native tongue, T'aiki, in preschool; the family speaks Spanish and English at home.
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Vlašić wagged his tongue and ran toward his teammates with outstretched arms in celebration.
Noun
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In our day, before there was the interweb, 30 to 40 interviews a week, promoting stuff back-to-back-to-back in all dialects and languages.
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Like every precocious rising star fluent in the dialect of bluster, Wembanyama talked big, too.
Noun
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The best tended to use puns, literalization — turning an idiom into reality — and pedantic humor to delight and torment children in equal measures.
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That French idiom about having long teeth — les dents longues — can have negative connotations about a person’s ambitious streak.
Cite this Entry
“Mother tongue.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/mother%20tongue. Accessed 2 Jul. 2026.
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