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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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 In a different study, published in Nature, the scientists reported that native speakers of English, Spanish or Mandarin all showed these high-gamma responses to their mother tongues, but listening to foreign speech didn’t trigger the dips as strongly or consistently.—Elise Cutts, Scientific American, 12 Feb. 2026 Work with people of different ages, backgrounds, perspectives, and mother tongues.—Rachel Konrad, Time, 9 Dec. 2025 Each actress nails the comedic timing – and the accented English that flows with the cadence of their mother tongues.—Elizabeth B. Kim, Cincinnati Enquirer, 7 Nov. 2025 See All Example Sentences for mother tongue