How to Use mother tongue in a Sentence

mother tongue

noun
  • At each tap, the sound of her voice speaking her mother tongue emerges from the phone.
    — Time, 27 July 2023
  • 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
  • The theme is the conflict between mother tongues and other tongues.
    — Jesse Green, New York Times, 24 Jan. 2025
  • 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
  • In a May 2019 survey, about a third of Ukrainians named Russian as their mother tongue.
    — Michael Bociurkiw, CNN, 18 Aug. 2022
  • How could someone who’d left China in fifth grade have kept up her mother tongue so well?
    — Shuang Xuetao, The New Yorker, 24 Nov. 2024
  • How could someone who’d left China in fifth grade have kept up her mother tongue so well?
    — Shuang Xuetao, The New Yorker, 24 Nov. 2024
  • And as added bonus, native English speakers will be able to speak in their mother tongue.
    — Teen Vogue, 25 Mar. 2019
  • And as added bonus, native English speakers will be able to speak in their mother tongue.
    — Teen Vogue, 25 Mar. 2019
  • Czesław Miłosz found in himself the heart to give up the terrain of his mother tongue, and to keep writing poems in Polish.
    — Robert Pinsky, The New Yorker, 30 Jan. 2025
  • But most also want their children to first gain a strong grounding in their mother tongue.
    — Chris Buckley, New York Times, 9 Jan. 2025
  • At the chalk clutched in his hand, the letters of her mother tongue like withered bloodstains, but white, distinct on the blackboard.
    — Han Kang, The New Yorker, 30 Jan. 2023
  • In my mother tongue, Marathi, salad is called koshimbir.
    — Annada D. Rathi, Washington Post, 9 Sep. 2020
  • Her midwife gently coached her in their mother tongue, Inuktitut, as the morning sun cast a cool light across the floor.
    — Amber Bracken, New York Times, 5 Jan. 2020
  • And when this Medellín native greets me in his mother tongue, the melody of his voice is nearly as tender as his ballads.
    — Patricia Alfonso Tortolani, Allure, 23 July 2024
  • In New York, a poet who fled Odessa contemplates his mother tongue.
    — From Cnn Opinion, CNN, 2 Mar. 2022
  • The Celts’ speech is of Indo-European origin (as are 445 of the world’s languages), but not much is known about the origins of the Iberians’ mother tongue.
    — National Geographic, 24 Nov. 2020
  • And the store has not forgotten its essence: that Germanness shared by everyone who speaks the mother tongue and loves a great sausage.
    — Reggie Nadelson, New York Times, 26 Feb. 2020
  • Now, this brave man, whose mother tongue was Russian, has become a victim of the Russian invasion of Ukraine -- a tragedy and a shame.
    — Jens Christian-Wagner, CNN, 23 Mar. 2022
  • There’s one final touch: stapled onto each bag is a note written in the mother tongue of the person who will receive it.
    — Crystal Hana Kim, Glamour, 2 Nov. 2021
  • Growing up on the western frontier of the Tang empire, Li Po spoke a Turkish dialect as his mother tongue.
    — Yunte Huang, WSJ, 11 Jan. 2019
  • After all, as there is no such thing as a choice of mother tongue, there is no such thing as a choice of motherland, or, for that matter, of a mother.
    — Sigrid Nunez, The New York Review of Books, 27 May 2021
  • After all, as there is no such thing as a choice of mother tongue, there is no such thing as a choice of motherland, or, for that matter, of a mother.
    — Sigrid Nunez, The New York Review of Books, 11 May 2021
  • People like her are rare and she's seen firsthand how Covid-19 is threatening her mother tongue.
    — Nicole Chavez, CNN, 5 Mar. 2021
  • The English language was draped over the Dutch city of New Amsterdam long ago, but the earlier mother tongue still pokes through here and there.
    — Daniel Akst, WSJ, 29 Apr. 2021
  • Or rather, knew their home country, understood their history, and could speak to them in their mother tongue.
    — Romina Ruiz-Goiriena, USA TODAY, 22 July 2021
  • Conceived amid the bombs in Kabul, I was born and raised until age 7 in Fremont, and taught that my mother tongue, Farsi, was a foreign language.
    — Various Staff Writers, Special Correspondents, and Special Contributors, The Christian Science Monitor, 22 Dec. 2023
  • Their goal is to vastly expand the amount of information available in their mother tongue.
    — NBC News, 6 Mar. 2015
  • Our mother tongue, on the other hand, incites us to Captain Kirk-like bouts of impulsive passion.
    — Julie Sedivy, Discover Magazine, 30 May 2012
  • Künstler, meaning artist in German, Deckard’s mother tongue, alludes to the concentration of artists and galleries in the area.
    — Markus Haas, San Antonio Express-News, 11 Jan. 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'mother tongue.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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