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
How could someone who’d left China in fifth grade have kept up her mother tongue so well?
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Shuang Xuetao, The New Yorker, 24 Nov. 2024
Help with that one comes from Emery and his coaching staff, who have been asked by Onana to address him in their mother tongue.
—Jacob Tanswell, The Athletic, 20 Aug. 2024
This suggested, startlingly, that birds could learn a literal mother tongue while still in ovo.
—Rivka Galchen, The New Yorker, 14 Oct. 2024
The font on the album cover is a play on the Geʽez script used in Amharic, her mother tongue.
—Mankaprr Conteh, Rolling Stone, 20 Sep. 2024
See all Example Sentences for mother tongue 
Shuang Xuetao, The New Yorker, 24 Nov. 2024
Help with that one comes from Emery and his coaching staff, who have been asked by Onana to address him in their mother tongue.
—Jacob Tanswell, The Athletic, 20 Aug. 2024
This suggested, startlingly, that birds could learn a literal mother tongue while still in ovo.
—Rivka Galchen, The New Yorker, 14 Oct. 2024
The font on the album cover is a play on the Geʽez script used in Amharic, her mother tongue.
—Mankaprr Conteh, Rolling Stone, 20 Sep. 2024
See all Example Sentences for mother tongue
Recent Examples of Synonyms for mother tongue
Noun
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Some 240 people work there in various tech startups, AI incubators and food science labs, conducting research and business in at least 14 languages.Ann Abel, Forbes, 15 Jan. 2025
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Part of the reason behind that was to control for differences between morphologically rich languages, where a single word may correspond to multiple words in morphologically simple languages.Ars Technica, Ars Technica, 15 Jan. 2025
Noun
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Gone will be the complex vocabulary that has often kept these issues in the hands of technical teams.Andrew Fingerman, Forbes, 10 Jan. 2025
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At Notre Dame, the Irish use similar vocabulary and techniques on defense and special teams.Matt Baker, The Athletic, 9 Jan. 2025
Noun
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The watch is powered by the in-house caliber 115, a hand-wound movement that boasts a 10-day power reserve and a unique non-linear power reserve indicator shaped like a snake's tongue.Bhanu Chopra, Forbes, 17 Jan. 2025
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Tiafoe attended the game with his girlfriend Ayan Broomfield, who posted a TikTok from the outing with video of the two couples posing together, and one of Swift playfully sticking out her tongue.Charlotte Phillipp, People.com, 9 Jan. 2025
Noun
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The body of water first showed up on European maps in the 1500s and has had at least 32 names in different languages and dialects throughout the years.Kevin Lynn, Newsweek, 7 Jan. 2025
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Much of the driving dialogue is in Irish, and most importantly, in the Ulster dialect.Anna Cafolla, Vogue, 29 Dec. 2024
Noun
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For instance, the grammar and translation method has been modernized to help students grasp complex concepts like abstract words, idioms and metaphors.Geoffrey Alphonso, Forbes, 3 Jan. 2025
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As romantic nationalism surged, scholars travelled the country collecting fairy tales, folk songs, local idioms, and traditional crafts.Caitlyn Murphy, Hazlitt, 18 Dec. 2024
Thesaurus Entries Near mother tongue
Cite this Entry
“Mother tongue.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/mother%20tongue. Accessed 22 Jan. 2025.
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