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The origin of the term mother tongue dates 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.” The term was also used by catholic monks to designate a particular language they used instead of Latin, when they were “speaking from the pulpit. That is “the holy mother of the church.” This term was introduced to colonies who inherited it from Christianity as part of their colonial legacy. However in the discipline of linguistics, mother tongue is used to refer to first language. The term is also used in SLL studies as first language (hereafter LI).
francis1897 answered the question on March 8, 2023 at 08:42