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
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
The film’s Park City premiere would mark the beginning of what would be an incredible 12-month trajectory for the £4M ($5M) film about three hedonistic Irish speakers who form hip-hop group Kneecap and become the unlikely figureheads of a civil rights movement to save their mother tongue.
—Diana Lodderhose, Deadline, 23 Jan. 2025
Miranda is a rare instance of Björk writing her lyrics entirely in Icelandic, and her melodies sound lovely and in some ways more natural in her mother tongue.
—Al Shipley, SPIN, 22 Jan. 2025
See All Example Sentences for mother tongue
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
The film’s Park City premiere would mark the beginning of what would be an incredible 12-month trajectory for the £4M ($5M) film about three hedonistic Irish speakers who form hip-hop group Kneecap and become the unlikely figureheads of a civil rights movement to save their mother tongue.
—Diana Lodderhose, Deadline, 23 Jan. 2025
Miranda is a rare instance of Björk writing her lyrics entirely in Icelandic, and her melodies sound lovely and in some ways more natural in her mother tongue.
—Al Shipley, SPIN, 22 Jan. 2025
See All Example Sentences for mother tongue
Recent Examples of Synonyms for mother tongue
Noun
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Proponents have long invoked civil rights language to promote vouchers, a disturbing rhetorical choice given vouchers originated as a tool for southern white parents to avoid the Supreme Court's desegregation order in Brown v. Board of Education.—
Kevin Sabet,
MSNBC Newsweek,
15 May 2025
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Police did say what led to the altercation, but sources told TMZ that Saitta and his group had been repeatedly harassing Von and using threatening language.—
Jami Ganz,
New York Daily News,
15 May 2025
Noun
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The worst insults in his vocabulary, however, remain G-rated.—
Natalie Krebs,
Outdoor Life,
8 May 2025
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With pan dulce baking in the oven and music in the air, this bilingual song introduces little ones to the joy of cooking with loved ones, family traditions, and beginner Spanish vocabulary.—
Fiona Tapp,
Parents,
8 May 2025
Noun
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The taste, a pink electrocution of the tongue, was indescribable—and there was a version that was more so?—
Patricia Lockwood,
New Yorker,
18 May 2025
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As bats were swinging, tongues were wagging about Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred’s ruling that bans by the MLB end at death.—
Kelly Phillips Erb,
Forbes.com,
17 May 2025
Noun
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Many learners struggle with deciding whether to focus on MSA or a regional dialect, which impacts their ability to communicate effectively in real-world scenarios.—
Geoffrey Alphonso,
Forbes.com,
7 May 2025
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Koine Greek—the dialect of the New Testament—was then the lingua franca of the eastern-Mediterranean world, although, of course, familiarity with it ranged from erudite scholarship to learning a few words for the sake of haggling in the marketplace.—
The New Yorker,
New Yorker,
5 May 2025
Noun
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But the nature of all idioms is that their meaning cannot be deduced from their components; the phrase kicked the bucket does not put the English speaker in the mind of an actual bucket, just as the word death does not remind him terribly of the letter D.—
Andrea Long Chu,
Vulture,
6 May 2025
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Best known as a savvy drummer deeply versed in a broad swath of pre-World War II idioms like ragtime, Delta blues, and swing, Devine is at home surrounded by the artifacts and ephemera that captured the sounds and spirit of that era.—
Andrew Gilbert,
Mercury News,
1 May 2025
Cite this Entry
“Mother tongue.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/mother%20tongue. Accessed 23 May. 2025.
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