mother tongue

noun

1

: one's native language

2

: a language from which another language derives

Synonyms

• language
• lingo
• speech
• tongue
• vocabulary

Examples of mother tongue in a Sentence

although the anthropologist could speak the local language fairly well, she was always glad to find someone who shared her mother tongue

Recent Examples on the Web

Yiddish, the mother tongue of Ashkenazi Jews in Europe for nearly a thousand years, is still spoken by about six hundred thousand ultra-Orthodox Jews mostly concentrated in America, Europe, and Israel. —Adam Kirsch, The New Yorker, 21 Mar. 2025

So to be able to play in my mother tongue would be an amazing experience because there would be no boundaries whatsoever. —Todd Gilchrist, Variety, 18 Mar. 2025

So to be able to play in my mother tongue would be an amazing experience because there would be no boundaries whatsoever. —Todd Gilchrist, Variety, 18 Mar. 2025

The show opened with songs in Mukherjee’s mother tongue Bengali, that were composed, written and sung by famous Bengali musicians including Nobel Prize awardee Rabindranath Tagore. —Riddhi Doshi, CNN, 28 Jan. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for mother tongue

• bremsstrahlung
• overhung
• among
• hirschsprung
• unsung
• bling
• bung
• clung
• dung
• flung
• fung
• hung

Kids Definition

mother tongue

noun

1

: one's native language

2

: a language from which another language develops