In the strictest sense, we all have a mother tongue as we all have only one (biological) mother. – But does this mean that the language our mother talked to us is automatically our mother tongue?

What about this friend I had in school, who was adopted when she was 2 and grew up in a Dutch family: would her mother tongue be Swahili because her mum was talking Swahili to her or would it be Dutch, because this was the language the mother who adopted her talked to her?

Usually, mother tongue – or father tongue to be politically correct! –  defines the first language we were exposed to, chronologically speaking, our L1, the first language we understand, speak, the one we grew up with or that our parents (or caregivers) speak with us. And usually people tend to speak this language for a long time.

If we want to define the first language we speak, learn and feel comfortable with, the term first language may seem more appropriate. This first language doesn’t have to be one. In bilingual families it can be two or three: the important aspect to define a language as first language is, that the child uses it on a regular basis, preferably every day from the very beginning. Linguists suggested a few years ago that an exposure of at least 20% of the daily time would be optimal for a child to become (almost) equally proficient in the family languages (but this has changed already and the duration of exposure is not the most important factor of becoming a bilingual!).

If there are more than one first languages in a family, we can also use the term of family languages: these would be for example the language a child talks with the mother, another one with the father, a third one with a caregiver (i.e. at daycare, school etc.), maybe a next one with extended family or locals, a fourth one with friends… Simultaneous bilinguals or multilinguals are exposed to more than one (or two) languages since day one. Successive bilinguals or multilinguals, are those who add other languages after having acquired the first language(s).

Using a term like family languages works if the language situation within the family is stable. And it would also work for extended family would share these languages – But we all know that in multilingual families, the languages we speak at home can vary and the situation can shift. Situations change, we move abroad, we immerse into other cultures and languages and within a bilingual family this can be a reason for preferring one language to another – even if only for a certain period of time.
I personally prefer and use the term of home languages when I talk about the languages a family speaks at home, as there can be other people involved: caregivers, nannies, babysitters etc. can speak another language to my child on a daily/weekly basis and this language would become one of the most important languages for my child.

My languages

Let’s consider my personal language situation: my parents only spoke German with me and my sister, but we were exposed to Italian since day one. We didn’t “learn” it in the conventional, academical way, so Italian counts as our second-mother-tongue or one of our first languages. – Usually, when people ask me which is my mother tongue (or mother language) I answer German and Italian. Both languages are still equally dominant and valuable for me.

If I analyze the different phases in my life, there were phases where Italian or French or German were dominant languages. In one phase (of almost 6 years) I would mainly speak Italian and French (and study Old-French and Old-Provençal, which felt like “living” in this time and period!). During that period I really had difficulties communicating in German and couldn’t form a complete sentence in German.

Only when this linguistic situation changed and I focused more on German and Italian, my German became more dominant for a short period.

English is the fourth language I’ve learned and I didn’t use it very often from age 20 to 34. I did re-activate and improve it when we moved to the Netherlands and our children started attending an English school. At the same time I also improved my Dutch.

In the last 11 years, English and Dutch became the most dominant languages, with German being our family language.

Therefore, my first languages are now German, English and Dutch, with occasionally Italian (the language that still feels like the closest to my heart!), French and Swissgerman (and adding Spanish to the picture which I have a great passive knowledge in but where I’m working on the verbal fluency).

What are my children’s first languages?

From a chronological point of view, Italian and Swiss-German are the “first languages” for all of my children, but only for their first years, because we decided at some point to only speak German with them – while still reading and singing with them in Swiss-German and Italian –, and this changed again when they started attending the Dutch daycare and then an English school.

Today – I should better say “at the moment”…– they consider German, English and Dutch as their main languages, i.e. the ones they are most fluent in. These are their most dominant languages. They don’t feel that confident in Swiss-German or Italian at the moment, but I know by my own experience that this can change if the linguistic situation changes again or if they just decide to talk them more often.

For multilingual children, the linguistic situation within the family and social context changes constantly, and if this happens in their early years, the concept of “first language” changes too, it only refers to the first language acquired, so in strictly chronological terms.

The first language or mother tongue plays an important role in sociolinguistics, as it is the basis for people’s sociolinguistic identity. Terms like native language or mother tongue refer to an ethnic group rather than to the first language. This all confuses families and teachers as, usually, one needs to indicate the “mother tongue” of the children when signing them up for a daycare or school. This is why I always recommend to indicate also the languages that our children are most dominant in at the moment… 

Native speakers are considered to be “authority on their given language due to their natural acquisition process regarding the language, versus having learned the language later in life”.

By concentrating on the natural acquisition process, my native languages would be German, Italian, Swiss-German and Dutch because I did acquire them naturally, i.e. without “studying” them. I did not “learn” them at school, I did imitate speakers and copy sentences. I learnt how to read and write them partly at school – German and Italian.

The fact that someone is a “native” speaker because he or she acquired this language at an early stage, doesn’t really make sense to me. We all need to nurture our languages, learn the different meanings of words, form longer sentences, find out what register to use in different settings, which all takes many years!

Fact is that we are perfectly able to acquire a language in a “natural” way also in a later stage of our life. And if a language we acquired or learnt later in life becomes our most dominant language, i.e. the one we speak most, write in and read, our “first language” or “mother tongue” can become a secondary language and sometimes even be lost… (cfr. language attrition).

In his lecture “English and Welsh” in 1955, J.R.R. Tolkien distinguishes the “native tongue” from the “cradle tongue”. The cradle tongue being the language we learn during early childhood and the native tongue “may be different, possibly determined by an inherited linguistic taste, and may later in life be discovered by a strong emotional affinity to a specific dialect (Tolkien confessed to such an affinity to the Middle English of the West Midlands in particular)” (cfr. pdf of “English and Welsh” by J.R.R. Tolkien)

We each have our own personal linguistic potential: we each have a native language. But that is not the language that we speak, our cradle-tongue, the first-learned. Linguistically we all wear ready-made clothes, and our native language comes seldom to expression, save perhaps by pulling at the ready-made till it sits a little easier. But though it may be buried, it is never wholly extinguished, and contact with other languages may stir it deeply.

My chief point here is to emphasize the difference between the first-learned language, the language of custom, and an individual’s native language, his inherent linguistic predilections: not to deny that he will share many of these with others of his community. He will share them, no doubt, in proportion as he shares other elements in his make-up. (cfr. “English and Welsh” by J.R.R. Tolkien, p.18)

There is so much to say (and write) about this topic! One could add the term of heritage language, which is often misunderstood as a synonym of mother language/tongue… But I’ll stop here.

The predilection of a language is more important than the chronological place it has in our language acquisition history. (Ute)

For me, personally, the language I prefer speaking and that is closest to my heart and I’m more spontaneous in, is not the language my parents talked to me during the first period of my life. What about you? Do you (still) prefer speaking the first language you learnt, or is another language more important for you right now?

If you are interested in this topic and would like to know more about it:

I hold workshops on bilingualism and parenting the bilingual child and consult parents, caregivers and teachers about it.

About the origin of the term mother tongue

“The origin of the term mother tongue harks back to the notion that linguistic skills of a child are honed by the mother and therefore the language spoken by the mother would be the primary language that the child would learn.” However, this type of culture-specific notion is a misnomer. The term was used by Catholic monks to designate a particular language they used, instead of Latin, when they are “speaking from the pulpit”.That is, the “holy mother of the Church” introduced this term and colonies inherited it from the Christianity as a part of their colonial legacy, thanks to the effort made by foreign missionaries in the transitional period of switching over from 18th-century Mercantile Capitalism to 19th-century Industrial Capitalism in India.” (cfr. wikipedia)

 (“Constant dripping wears the stone”)

(updated 2020)

Raising bilingual children is not only a commitment which requires lots of energy to provide the regular inputs, maintain the passion for the language throughout all the years, but also requires a great amount of flexibility.

Several years ago, I wrote a post about the language choice we had to make within our family and how we managed to still keep up with the languages we didn’t talk on a regular basis.

When I stopped talking Italian to my son he was 4,5 years old. I honestly hoped that some day he would ask me to speak it with him again. Among my children he is the one who started earlier with reading and writing, and he is  very talented in languages (and literature in general).

A few years ago he had the opportunity to follow classes in Spanish and French and I was very pleased to see that he loved both of them.
We had very long discussions about the similar vocabulary, the difference in orthography and, of course, the analogies with Italian. This exposure to related languages made him realize that talking Italian is valuable too. It wasn’t the first time he heard those languages, but learning about them at school, in a setting with peers, made them apparently more valuable for him. – For me this was a very interesting aspect. I always thought that being exposed to a language in “real life”, i.e. during holidays and with friends would suffice to persuade somebody of the necessity to learn it. But the peer-pressure and the formal setting was the trigger for my son at this stage (11 yo).

I was immensely pleased when he asked me to talk Italian with him again; and he asked in Italian! I think that only parents whose children have not replied in the desired language for a long time can understand what this meant to me. These 6 words meant the world to me: “Vogliamo parlare in Italiano d’ora in poi?” It was the greatest gift he could give to me. – We now talk Italian in the weekends and occasionally when we are one-on-one. We both enjoy it very much!

This phase of re-introduction of Italian started 6 years ago and although my son does not read or write Italian regularly, and surely not up to a level of fluency that one could call nearly-native, and which was my initial plan, I am confident that should he ever need to improve his language skills, he has all he needs to succeed.

With this short “update”, I want to share that initial plans can change. It can be difficult to make a choice that meets the child’s needs, but there is always a chance to re-introduce a language later in life! We go through phases in all domains of life, also with regard to our languages.
My son is currently learning Chinese with his Chinese friend, which I wholeheartedly welcome and support! I am looking forward to seeing what the future of languages will bring!

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When we “gave up” Italian and Swiss-German a few years ago, my husband and I were worried that this lack of consistency would affect the language acquisition of our children. We thought that they would not understand us talking German to them, that they would refuse replying to us in German and that they would forget those other languages and never be interested in them.

I think that the fact that those languages kept being important for my husband and me, that we still used them also in the presence of our children – while talking to friends etc. – and that we regularly visited our relatives who speak those languages, kept them easily accessible for them. Italian and Swiss-German are part of their language repertoire and they know that they can nurture them whenever they want.

I’m convinced that the consistent passive exposure to these other languages helped our children to still have “a good rapport” to them.

Like if the door to access those languages was always open. This not only happened for Italian, but also for Swiss-German for our son, which he talks with great confidence and the right intonation while talking to his Swiss-German family.

The fact that our children would not actively use them on a regular basis does not prevent them to use and learn them at any later stage in their lives. – I know by my own experience that this can happen.

“We can plant different seeds, water them, expose them to sun, but can’t predict how fast they grow and when they will come to fruition.”

When you are multilingual and start having kids, you have to choose which language you’ll talk to your children. Linguists always recommend to talk your “mothertongue” to you children. But which is the mothertongue if you are perfectly bilingual? In my case: should I talk Italian or German to my kids?

When our son was born, we lived in Italy and as Italian is one of my mother tongues, it was very natural for me to talk Italian to him from the beginning. Our home languages were Italian (me and my son), Swissgerman (my husband and my son) and German (my husband and me) and we were convinced that he would pick up German automatically too.

When we moved to the Netherlands our son was 2.5 years old and he went to a dutch daycare twice a week since almost immediately. After two months he started to talk less and less Italian to me. My husband was still talking Swissgerman to him and I noticed that my son prefered to answer me in Swissgerman or even Dutch too. Supposing that this was just a phase, I kept on talking Italian knowing that he would at least gain a passive competence in this language.

Unfortunately in this period we didn’t find families with children of his age with whom he could talk and play. He also realized that I did understand and talk all the other languages he was exposed to, including Dutch. So, why should he bother talking Italian only with me?

Then our twindaughters were born. I still kept talking Italian to my kids. I hoped that when my girls would start talking Italian my son would follow them. In fact, they all three did for almost four months when my daughters were 11-15 months old. But then my twindaughters started to communicate in an autonomous language that had nothing in common (neither phonetically, nor morphologically) with the languages they were exposed to.

This secret language became a problem in our family because nobody could understand what they were saying. Against all warings from linguists, my husband and I decided to narrow down the languages in our family and started to talk German altogether. I did study bilingualism and was perfectly aware of all the negative impact this change could have on our childrens’ linguistic developement.

Fortunately, all our children did respond very well to this change: our girls stopped talking the secret language and now, six years later, they all talk English, Dutch and German almost every day and they even talk a bit Italian with our Italian talking members of the family and Swissgerman with the Swissgerman ones when we visit.

When you’re a multilingual parent it is very difficult to teach children simultaneously more than one language. It requires a real commitment and means a lot of work. Some families have fix situations or days where they talk one or the other language. We do have fix times when we talk English or Dutch at home, but I didn’t try this (yet) with Swissgerman and Italian (that would be 5 languages within our family on a regular basis…), but I’m convinced that giving my children even only passive input of Italian and Swissgerman helped them to understand the languages and to even talk when they’re exposed to it for a longer period.

Our initial attempt to raise perfectly bilingual children in Swissgerman and Italian may seem to have failed, but we have now children who talk perfectly English, German and Dutch instead, who have a basic competence in Swissgerman and Italian. Sometimes multilingual parents have to make choices that may not be the ones they wanted in the beginning, but that are vital for their children to survive in the jungle of languages.

If the situation with my daughters wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t be teaching my kids to write and read German (our schools’ curriculum doesn’t provide German lessons at an early stage). I would like to teach them Italian too, but my son recently told me that he would like to learn Spanish and French first… Alors, on parlera Français or hablaremos Español instead.

If you would like to read the updated version of this post, please read it on my website.

Related articles

• “How many languages are too many for a child?” (InCultureParent) (expatsincebirth.com)
• When there’s a will there’s a way to become a multilingual (expatsincebirth.com)
• Challenges raising bi/multilingual kids… (3rdculturechildren.com)
• Which language to choose (expatsincebirth.com)