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
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
See All Example Sentences for mother tongue
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
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
See All Example Sentences for mother tongue
Recent Examples of Synonyms for mother tongue
Noun
-
This platform uses rigorous standardization protocols, like OMB guidelines for demographics and ISO codes for language, ensuring consistency.—
Raghvendra Tripathi,
Forbes.com,
27 May 2025
-
With technical innovation and a brand defining visual language that dates back 102 years, TIME Studios aims to impact communities and the world at large with ideas that forge true progress.—
TIME PR,
Time,
27 May 2025
Noun
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Fans of Harry Potter books, films will likely recognize the setting, vocabulary, characters at Epic Universe.—
Samantha Neely,
USA Today,
22 May 2025
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Who wants their grandchildren to emulate such limited vocabulary, negative language and divisive rhetoric?—
Christine Ledbetter,
Chicago Tribune,
22 May 2025
Noun
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His mother wet a sponge to moisten his lips and tongue.—
Stephanie Armour,
Miami Herald,
29 May 2025
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Brushing, flossing, and using a tongue scraper can remove bacteria and improve taste perception.—
Fran Kritz,
Verywell Health,
28 May 2025
Noun
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There’s no universal language—only tribal dialects.—
Shekar Natarajan,
Forbes.com,
29 May 2025
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Because the characters are speaking a very distinctive local dialect, and that’s, of course, completely lost in translation.—
Georg Szalai,
HollywoodReporter,
28 May 2025
Noun
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Powered by nine proprietary learning methods, the platform integrates real-time cultural signals - from memes and slang to idioms and ancient lore.—
Nell Derick Debevoise,
Forbes.com,
8 May 2025
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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
Cite this Entry
“Mother tongue.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/mother%20tongue. Accessed 4 Jun. 2025.
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