Importance of Mother Tongue!

Mother language also known as the mother tongue is the language that a human being learns from infancy. This language is also known as the first language or the native language of that particular person which becomes the basis for the sociolinguistic identity of that person. The term mother tongue or mother language is generally used for the language that the person learns from his or her parents and other members in the family and from the neighbiourhood and eventually can interact with the community at large.




It is believed that there are more than 7000 mother languages in the world. There is an apprehension that more than 90 percent of these languages may vanish by the end of the present century due to various factors. In the present era of globalization, the ethnic languages are facing the threat of being wiped out. As people have to migrate from one place to the other in search of employment, the young immigrant children, whose families have moved to a new linguistic environment my lose in part or totally, the language that they had acquired first, the mother tongue.



Language, especially the mother language is a medium of communication within the family and society. Every language expresses the culture of society to the complete satisfaction of its members. The language an individual speaks is for him or her the most expressive and often the most beautiful of all languages. But there are also many people who prefer to speak and communicate in their second language rather than their mother tongue. They feel more comfortable in the second language because their mother tongue might be very limited and does not provide a large number of words or expressions. One can have two or more native languages, thus being a native bilingual or multilingual. The order in which these languages are learned is not necessarily the order of proficiency.